“There is a love which, born In early days, lives on through silent years.”
“Love is life’s end.” —Spenser.
Erminie—Lady Erminie now—sat in an elegantly-furnished library, pulling a costly bouquet wantonly to pieces, and looking excessively lovely in her dress of pale-blue silk and white lace.
Pacing up and down the room, as if for a wager, was Master Ranty Lawless, with a look as nearly approaching the intensely gloomy as was possible for his handsome, happy face to wear.
“Why, Ranty, what in the world is the matter with you this morning?” said Erminie, at last, opening her sweet blue eyes very wide in innocent wonder.
“Lady Erminie, I’m going away, this very morning; and what’s more, I’m never going to come back! I’ll be swung to the yard-arm if I do!” was the unexpected answer, delivered with a savage, jerking abruptness that made Erminie drop her flowers and half rise from her seat in consternation.
“Why, Ranty—why, Ranty! How can you talk so? What has happened? What is the matter? Are you going crazy?”
“What’s happened? Everything’s happened, everything’s the matter, and I am going crazy, if it’s any consolation to you to learn it. Yes, you may look surprised, Lady Erminie Germaine, or De Courcy, or whatever your name may be, but you are the cause of it all; and you know it too, for all you sit up there looking as innocent and unconscious as it is possible for any young woman to look. Never mind though; I don’t care! Just go on, Lady Erminie! You’ll find what a nice young man you’ve lost, when it’s too late!” said Ranty, striding up and down, and looking ferociously at poor Erminie.
“Oh, Ranty! how can you go on so? What have I done?” said Erminie, twisting her fingers, and looking up with shining, tearful eyes, looking so pretty and innocent in her distress that Ranty’s better angel prompted him to go over and caress away her tears on the spot.
But Ranty was angry and didn’t do anything of the kind. On the contrary, he grew twice as fierce as before, and strode up and down twice as rapidly, bursting out with:
“What have you done? There’s a question! What haven’t you done, I want to know? You knew very well I loved you, and paid attention to you since you were the size of a well-grown doughnut, and when you hadn’t a cent to bless yourself with. You know I did, Lady Erminie, and you needn’t deny it. Well, your father and mother turn up, and you find yourself a fine lady, and after that you grow stiff and dignified, and keep me at a distance, as Paddy did the moon, and flirt with every bescented, behair-oiled jackanapes that squirms, and bows, and simpers, and makes fools of themselves, and talk with all sorts of soft nonsense to you! You know you do, Lady Erminie, and I repeat it, you needn’t deny it! Here was last night, at that concert, soiree, or tea-party, or whatever it was, didn’t you let that contemptible fool, the Honorable Augustus Ahringfeldt, make the strongest sort of love to you the whole blessed evening. Honorable, indeed! A pretty honorable, he is, all hair and conceit, like a scented orang-outang!” sneered Ranty, elevating his Roman nose to the loftiest angle of scorn.