"Of course not," she answers; but, under his steady questioning gaze a faint pink stains her cheek, and he knows that the story of the fallen sister has reached even this sheltered little vestal.
"Well, Cicely, I think I'll take myself off and tell your parents of my happiness. I'm not of much use to you, I fear."
"Not much in your present state of mind certainly," she says, with a bright cold smile.
"And, besides, there are two sons of Leviticus prowling outside, gazing at me, their eyes glowing with most unholy fire. I hope their fists will prove steadier than mine, though I doubt it. Oh, Saint Cecilia, Saint Cecilia, I wonder how many slaughtered curates lie on your soul! Who would be your father's henchman in the cloth?"
He goes, humming a rollicking love-song of old Tom Moore's, and the curates come in and bravely stick, stitch, plaster, and sort the charitable chattels, and make discreet but eager love to their rector's daughter—a young lady who, besides her many moral and personal attractions, inherits a snug little fortune of fifteen thousand pounds from a maternal aunt, and is the granddaughter of a mighty earl with two fat livings in his gift. But their vows and smiles are all in vain, for Cicely bestowed that otherwise well-ordered piece of mechanism, her heart, one January noon, some three years before, on a fresh-faced Eton lad who, at the imminent risk of his life, unaided, rescued her and a school-friend of her own age from a cruel death on the day the ice broke so unexpectedly on the lake in Saunderson Park—and this young gentleman was, alas, the lucky lover of Miss Lefroy!
CHAPTER XXVI.
The summer goes by drowsily. Before the brambles are tinted a purplish red, before the leaves of the spotted sycamore and tawny beech strew the crisp carpet of the grove, the name, almost the memory, of Adelaide Lefroy has passed from Nutshire. Fresher scandals have cropped up. A certain great lady, mature in years, has seen fit to elope one morning with her brother's stud-groom, a good-looking lad of twenty, and so the more commonplace misdemeanor of the younger woman has to make way for this startling event. Then the races come on, followed by a big fancy-ball and a lawn-tennis tournament—the first held in the county. Altogether the people have enough to busy their minds and their tongues about besides those unfortunate and disreputable Lefroys, who, moreover, have had the grace to retire from the scene at once and supply no further food for popular comment for the time being.
Pauline and her sister go to Aunt Jo, under whose protection the former intends to remain until the new year, when she is to return to her native soil as Mrs. Everard of Broom Hill.