“Tell him I hate him!” cried the poor penitent, bursting into tears again. “I hope, madam, you will never mention his name to me—no, not once more! Oh! oh! you hurt me.”
The affectionate mamma had given the curls a little tug.
“You silly fool!” said she, “don’t you know he can ruin your prospects? You’ll offend your father so that he’ll discard you, and then what will you do? If you are so dishonourable and disobedient, when we are striving for your good, we shall let you go to the destruction you choose.”
“I hope I shall find some friends who will not think me dishonourable,” sobbed poor Arabella, thinking with rueful gratitude and confidence of honest Peter and his fraternal feelings. “I’m not dishonourable. I’m trying to do right. I may have been foolish, but that—man—he can’t be a gentleman, or he would not persecute me so. I don’t know what reason you can have for wanting to make me miserable.”
“My reasons are of course wise and judicious,” retorted Mrs. B. “I will see you once more, and then, if you do not choose to yield, you will be the cause of the éclatant scandal of the season. You won’t think of going to the race with those red eyes. I wouldn’t take you if you did.”
Poor Arabella was the only one who did not go; everybody went; all that we have encountered in this history and platoons of others.
The first beach at Newport is straightish, and a mile or so in length,—a very long “or so,” when you are dragged over it in the unwilling family coach, by stagnant steeds—a very short mile when the beautiful comrade whose presence is a consecration and a poet’s dream, says “Shall we gallop?” and cheats with fleeting transport, as she passes, the winds from summer seas, that sigh to stay and dally with her curls.
Between beach number one and beach number two is an interregnum of up and down, a regency of dust. Then comes the glorious second beach. You will hardly see anything more beautiful than this long, graceful sweep, silvery grey in the sunshine, with a keener silver dashed along its edge by curving wave that follows curving wave. You will hardly see any place gayer than this same wide path beside the exhilarating dash of the Atlantic, on a gay afternoon of August—hundreds of carriages, more or less well-appointed; scores of riders, more or less well-mounted or -seated.
Thus, then, to the second beach between grey rocks, grey sand slopes, and grey meadows beyond, and on the other hand the gleaming glory of the sea, came at eleven that morning, to see the race, all the snobs and all the nobs. Peter Skerrett and his aides marshalled them. Mrs. Budlong, alone in her carriage, bowed and smiled very pleasantly to Peter. However critical that person may have felt her position, and whatever desperate resolve she might entertain for escape, through whatever postern, from the infamy of public dismissal, she was quite as usual. No; she was even handsomer than usual, more quietly splendid in attire, and reclining with calmer luxuriousness of demeanour on her cushions of satin.
Among the many traps, drags, and go-carts, of various degrees of knowingness, Mr. Waddy’s was conspicuous. Major Granby, old Budlong, and Paulding accompanied him. Old Bud said it made him quite young again to see the boys out.