Their hands met and lingered.
“Don’t call me Mrs. Mussard any more; my—my name is Vivienne,” she said in a half-whisper.
“Jolly! Hooky’s sister’s is Bethsaba,” said Valcourt. He made a quaint grimace, as though the word tasted nasty, and Vivienne gave a little, musical, contented laugh. “And I may come again, mayn’t I?”
“This week,” nodded Mrs. Mussard.
“I’ll say it’s my tooth,” explained Geraldine’s guileless offspring.
He reached the door, the handle turned, when Mrs. Mussard beckoned, and Valcourt came back.
“I should like to ask you,” she began hesitatingly—“not that it matters to me; but still, in your own interests—— And you know your mother is my dearest friend!” ... Valcourt stood with the beautiful grin upon his face, and Mrs. Mussard found the thing more difficult to say than she had imagined. “Where did you—who taught you to make love like—like that?—at your—at your age.... I—it is——” Valcourt made no reply in words, but the expression upon his face became more celestial than before. “I hope kissing is not a feature of the curriculum. But, understand clearly,” said Mrs. Mussard, with that unusual tremor in her charming voice, “that you are not for the future to kiss anybody but me!” And as the door closed on Valcourt’s heavenly grin and tourmaline eyes, she sat down to write a letter to Geraldine.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE FAIREST
If not absolutely a nincompoop, Gerald Delaurier Gandelish, Esq., of Swellingham Mansions, Piccadilly, Undertherose Cottage, Sunningwater, Berks, and Horshundam Abbey, Miltshire, was undoubtedly a type of the genus homo recently classified by a distinguished K.C. as soft-minded gentlemen. Strictly educated by a private clerical tutor under the eye of pious parents of limited worldly experience and unlimited prejudices, it was not to be expected that Gerry, upon their dying and leaving him in undisputed command of a handsome slice of the golden cheese of worldly wealth, should not immediately proceed to make ducks and drakes of it. He essayed to win a name upon the Turf; and when I remind you that, at a huge price, the youth became possessor of that remarkable Derby race-horse, Duffer, by Staggers out of Hansom Cab, from whom eighteen opponents cantered away in the Prince’s year of ’90, leaving the animal to finish the race at three lengths from the starting-post, I have said all. Gerry dabbled “considerable,” as our American relatives would say, in stocks, and started a café chantant on the open-air Parisian plan, which was frequented only by stray cats and London blacks, and has since been roofed in and turned into tea-rooms. Sundry other investments of Gerry’s resulted in the enrichment of several very shady persons, and a consequent, and very considerable, diminution in the large stock of ready money with which Gerry had started his career. But though the edges of the slice of golden cheese had been a good deal nibbled, the bulk of it remained, and Gerry’s Miltshire acres, strictly entailed and worth eighty thousand pounds, with another twenty thousand in Consols, and about half as much again snugly invested in Home Rails, made him a catch worth angling for in the eyes of many mothers.
We have termed Gerry “soft-minded.” He was also soft-hearted, soft-eyed, soft-voiced, soft-haired, soft-skinned, and soft-mannered—the kind of youth women who own to years of discretion like to pet and bully, the kind of man schoolgirls call a “duck.” True, his neckties aroused indignation in the breasts of intolerant elderly gentlemen, the patterns of his tweeds afforded exquisite amusement to members of the Household Brigade, and his jewelry could not be gazed at without winking by the unseasoned eye; but, despite these drawbacks, Gerry was a gentleman. Without the stamp of a public school or a select club, without the tone of the best society—for, with the exception of a turfy baronet or so and a couple of sporting peers, Gerry knew nobody who was anybody—Gerry was decidedly a gentleman, whose progress to the dogs was arrested, luckily for the young prodigal, when he fell in love with the famous burlesque actress, Miss Lottie Speranza, of the Levity Theater.