“No excuse!” growled the admiral, hollowing out his hands to hold the soft, pink cheeks, then saluting them with a kiss that resounded through the room like the double report of a pistol-shot. “No excuse indeed! You barefaced hypocrite! How dare you tell me such a crammer? You unmitigated young rascal, what do you mean by it?”
This series of polite inquiries my uncle fired off, holding Isabel all the time at arm's length, with a hand on each shoulder, and looking straight into her face. She was not the least disconcerted by this singular mode of apostrophe.
“Don't scold him! Don't be angry with him! Please don't! It was all my fault,” she said, and looked up at him as if she particularly wanted to kiss him.
“I'll horsewhip him! I'll tie him to the mainmast and flog him!” roared my uncle.
And then came a second volley of pistol-shots.
“No, you sha'n't! If you do, I'll horsewhip you!” declared Isabel, twining her arms round the old sailor's neck, and stamping her tiny foot at him.
My step-mother made her appearance at this crisis with Sir Simon Harness. She had driven to meet our guests, but, instead of driving back with them, she and Sir Simon walked up together from the station, and sent on the admiral alone in the carriage.
After bidding him a cordial welcome, I presented Isabel to Sir Simon. She held out her hand. He raised it to his lips, bending his venerable white head before my young wife with that courtly grace that gave a touch of old-fashioned stiffness to his manner towards women, but which was in reality the genuine expression of chivalrous respect.
Isabel, not apparently satisfied with the stately homage, drew nearer, and, putting up her face, “May I, Clide?” she said.
Sir Simon naturally did not “pause for a reply,” but taking the blushing face in his hands, he imprinted a fatherly kiss on her forehead. To say that I was proud of my wife and delighted with the way she had behaved [pg 739] towards my two friends would be to convey a very inadequate idea of the state of my feelings. I was simply inebriated. It is hardly a figure of speech to say that I did not know whether I was on my head or my heels. I had looked forward to this meeting with an apprehension which, from being undefined, was none the less painful, and the relief I experienced at the successful issue was in proportion great. My step-mother was evidently quite as surprised, if in a less degree gratified than myself. The afternoon passed delightfully, chatting and walking about the park; my two old friends usurping Isabel completely, making love to her under my eyes in the most unscrupulous manner, quarrelling as to who should have her arm when out walking, and sit next to her when they came in. Isabel flirted with both, utterly regardless of my feelings, and even hinted to me at lunch that my prophecy with regard to Sir Simon ran a fair chance of coming true. She came down to dinner arrayed like a fairy, in a dress that seemed to have been made out of a sunset and trimmed with a rainbow. She had put on all her jewels—those I had chosen for her, and the diamonds that came to me from my mother. She wore pearls round her neck, and a row of diamond stars in her hair; while her arms almost disappeared under the variety of bracelets of every form and date with which she had loaded them. It may have been in questionable taste and not very sensible, but there was an innocent womanly vanity in thus seizing the first available opportunity of showing herself in her finery that I thought perfectly delightful. I could see, too, that the admiral and Sir Simon were pleased at the infantine coquetry, and not a little flattered by it. My step-mother alone looked coldly on the proceeding; and while Isabel, sitting between the two old gentlemen, pointed out for their special admiration “this bracelet, with the diamond true-lover's knot, that Clide gave me the day after we were engaged, and this blue enamel with the Greek word in pearls that he bought me the day before we came home,” Mrs. de Winton dissected her walnuts, and, setting her face like a flint, kept outside the conversation till the subject changed.