"We are quite alone, this rainy night, my sister and I," she said. "Mr. Walters is out of town for a day or two. Fanny, my dear, Mr. Warden; my sister, Miss Summers, Mr. Warden."
It was a pretty, cozy room, "curtained, and close, and warm;" and directly under the gas-light, reading a lady's magazine, sat one of the prettiest girls it had ever been Mr. Warden's good fortune to see, and who welcomed him with a brilliant smile.
"Black eyes, jetty ringlets, rosy cheeks, alabaster brow," thought Mr. Warden, taking stock; "the smile of an angel, and dressed to perfection. Poor Tom! he's to be pitied. Really, I haven't come across anything so much to my taste this month of Sundays."
Down sat Mr. Paul Warden beside the adorable Fanny, plunging into conversation at once with an ease and fluency that completely took away Tom's breath. That despondent wooer on the sofa, beside Mrs. Walters, pulled dejectedly at the ears of her little black-and-tan terrier, and answered at random all the pleasant things she said to him. He was listening, poor fellow, to that brilliant flow of small talk from the mustached lips of his dashing friend, and wishing the gods had gifted him with a similar "gift of the gab," and feeling miserably jealous already. He had prepared the rack for himself with his eyes wide open; but that made the torture none the less when the machinery got in motion. Pretty Fanny snubbed him incontinently, and was just as bewitching as she knew how to his friend. It was a clear case of diamond cut diamond—two flirts pitted against each other; and an outsider would have been considerably puzzled on which to bet, both being so evenly matched.
Tom listened, and sulked; yes, sulked. What a lot of things they found to talk about, where he used to be tongue-tied. The magazine, the fashion-plates, the stories; then a wild launch into literature, novels, authors, poets; then the weather; then Mr. Warden was travelling, and relating his "hair-breadth escapes by flood and field," while bright-eyed Fanny listened in breathless interest. Then the open piano caught the irresistible Paul's eyes, and in a twinkling there was Fanny seated at it, her white fingers flying over the polished keys, and he bending above her with an entranced face. Then he was singing a delightful love-song in a melodious tenor voice, that might have captivated any heart that ever beat inside of lace and muslin; and then Fanny was singing a sort of response, it seemed to frantically jealous Tom; and then it was eleven o'clock, and time to go home.
Out in the open air, with the rainy night wind blowing bleakly, Tom lifted his hat to let the cold blast cool his hot face. He was sulky still, and silent—very silent; but Mr. Warden didn't seem to mind.
"So," he said, lighting a cigar, "the campaign has begun, the first blow has been struck, the enemy's ramparts undermined. Upon my word, Tom, the little girl is uncommonly pretty!"
"I told you so," said Tom, with a sort of growl.
"And remarkably agreeable. I don't think I ever spent a pleasanter tête-à-tête evening."
"So I should judge. She had eyes, and ears, and tongue for no one but you."