“Never mind, my dear; I am not so wicked as I seem. Besides, I am rather reckless and desperate just at this moment.”
“Why, what is the matter?”
“All my aspirations dashed to the ground during one short breakfast!” Alice rested her chin upon her hand, and gazed pensively upon the floor.
“What new farce is this?” asked Lucy, amused.
“And it is you who ask me that!” And Alice raised her eyes with a sad, reproachful look to those of her friend. “And you call it a farce? You!” And she sighed. “Of course,” resumed Alice, quickly raising her head and looking from face to face,—“of course you all noticed it. It was perfectly obvious. Yes, this Miss from the rural districts has swooped down and carried off the prey without an effort.”
“I, at least,” said Lucy, coloring, “saw nothing of the kind. In the first place, I sat at one end of the table and he at the other, and I am sure I hardly exchanged a dozen words with him.”
“Alas!” sighed Alice, “it is precisely there that the sting lies. I sat by him and had every advantage over you,—and I used every advantage. Didn’t you remark the tone in which I called his attention to the omelet? Could a siren have urged upon him, more seductively, a second cup of coffee? And how gently did I strive to overwhelm his soul with buckwheat cakes! And was the marmalade sweeter than the murmur in which I recommended it? And yet,”—Alice paused for a lull in the tumultuous laughter,—“and yet,” she continued, “strive as I would, I could not keep his eyes from wandering to your end of the table.”
“It is very strange,” said Lucy, wiping her eyes, “that all this was lost on me.”
“And then,” added Alice, “your most—some one will please attend to the fat lady; she seems in a fit—your most trivial remark, even though not addressed to him, seemed to rivet his attention. To confess the humiliating truth, Mary, I don’t believe he would recognize either of us, should he meet us in the street; but every lineament of Lucy’s face is graven—you know how they say it in novels. It is a regular case of love at first sight, my dear.”
Alice’s eyes ran along the circle of faces surrounding her as she spoke, and it so happened that when she paused at the words “my dear” she was looking Charley full in the face. Charley, as I have before remarked, had seen very little of young ladies, and I had several times observed that when Alice was speaking in her sparkling way he would watch her all the while out of the corners of his eyes, with an expression of wondering interest. Charley rarely laughed. I think his self-control in this regard amounted to somewhat of an affectation, and he had acquired a sort of serene moderation even in his smiles. But Alice’s bright, rattling talk seemed to have a sort of fascination for him, and to hurry him out of himself, as it were. And on this occasion I had been slyly watching his features moving in sympathy with the changing expression of her exceedingly mobile countenance. Entirely absorbed as he was in watching the play of her countenance, and thinking of I know not what, when he found her bright eyes resting full upon him, and himself seemingly addressed as “my dear,” he was suddenly startled out of his revery, and not knowing what to say: