may also pull everything down about our ears in a most uncomfortable manner."
"I hope you won't spoil everything by telling him or mother," said Addie, petulantly.
"Oh, no! Since you are determined upon it, I will look on and see the fun, if there is any. But, bah! He will find you all out in a day. As for Lottie palming herself off as a goodish young woman to whom any sane man would talk religion,--the very thought is preposterous!"
"Don't be too confident, Miss Bel," said Lottie, put upon her mettle. "If you all will only sustain me and not awaken his suspicions with your by-play and giggling, I will deceive the ingenuous youth in a way that will surprise you as well as him. Good acting must have proper support. This is something new,--out of the rut; and I am bound to make it a brilliant jest that we can laugh over all our lives. So remember, Julian, you will disconcert me at your peril."
"No fears of me. So long as your jest remains a jest, I will be the last one to spoil the sport."
With a chime of laughter that echoed to the attic of the old mansion, Lottie exclaimed, "The idea that I could ever become in earnest!"
"But the young clergyman may become dead in earnest," said Bel, who seemed the embodiment of a troublesome but weak conscience. "You know well, Mr. De Forrest, that Lottie's blandishments may be fatal to his peace."
"That is his affair," replied the confident youth, with a careless shrug.
Having arranged the details of the plot and been emphatically cautioned by Lottie, they awaited their victim.
CHAPTER II
.
THE VICTIM.
Frank Hemstead was expected on the evening train from the north, so the conspirators would not have long to wait. To pass the brief intervening time Lottie went to the piano and gave them some music like herself, brilliant, dashing, off-hand, but devoid of sentiment and feeling. Then she sprang up and began playing the maddest pranks on languid Bel, and with Addie was soon engaged in a romp with De Forrest and Harcourt, that would have amazed the most festive Puritan that ever schooled or masked a frolicsome nature under the sombre deportment required. The young men took their cue from the ladies, and elegance and propriety were driven away in shreds before the gale of their wild spirits. Poor Bel, buffeted and helpless, half-enjoying, half-frightened, protested, cried, and laughed at the tempest around her.
"I mean," said Lottie, panting after a desperate chase among the furniture, "to have one more spree, like the topers before they reform."
Though these velvety creatures with their habits of grace and elegance could romp without roughness, and glide where others would tear around, they could not keep their revel so quiet but that hurrying steps were heard. Bel warned them, and, before Mrs. Marchmont could enter, Lottie was playing a waltz, and the others appeared as if they had been dancing. The lady of precedent smiled, whereas if she had come a moment earlier she would have been horrified.
But the glow from the hearth, uncertain enough for their innocent deeds of darkness, had now to fade before the chandelier, and Mrs. Marchmont, somewhat surprised at the rumpled plumage of the young ladies, and the fact that Mr. De Forrest's neck-tie was awry, suggested that they retire and prepare for supper, whereat they retreated in literal disorder. But without the door their old frenzy seized them, and they nearly ran over the dilatory Bel upon the stairs. With sallies of nonsense, smothered laughter, a breezy rustle of garments, and the rush of swift motion, they seemed to die away in the upper halls like a summer gust. To Mrs. Marchmont their departure had seemed like a suppressed whirlwind.
"The young people of my day were more decorous," soliloquized the lady, complacently. "But then the De Forrests have French blood in them, and what else could you expect? It's he that sets them off."
The sound of approaching sleigh-bells hastened the young people's toilets, and when they descended the stairs, this time like a funeral procession, a tall figure, with one side that had been to the windward well sifted over with snow, was just entering the hall.
Mrs. Marchmont welcomed him with as much warmth as she ever permitted herself to show. She was a good and kind lady at heart, only she insisted upon covering the natural bloom and beauty of her nature with the artificial enamel of mannerism and conventionality. During the unwrapping process the young people stood in the background, but Lottie watched the emergence from overcoat and muffler of the predestined victim of her wiles with more than ordinary curiosity.
The first thing that impressed her was his unusual height, and the next a certain awkwardness and angularity. When he came to
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