Lippa | Page 2

Paul, moving towards the well filled drawing-room; the music has ceased and everyone is talking at once. He pauses for a second in the doorway and glances round the room, bowing to two or three people, then making his way to the window holds out his hand to a girl who is looking decidedly ennuy��e.
'How do you do, Mr Ponsonby,' she says in a clear sweet voice, 'I'm so glad you've come, don't you know the feeling of loneliness that comes over one in a crowd of unknown people, and I've been here all the afternoon feeling dreadfully cross, and have wished myself back again in Switzerland about twenty times. It's rather a bad beginning,' she adds, with a little laugh--
'Feeling cross, do you mean?' asks he, 'I often think it does one a great deal of good to be cross. I wish Mrs Grundy didn't come between us and the carpet, it would be so delightful to sprawl full length on it and roar; I remember I used to derive a great deal of comfort in it in the days of my youth.'
'I suppose that was a long time ago,' says she, mischievously--
'Yes, of course, almost centuries--but where's Teddy?'
'Gone out for a walk,' replied Philippa, 'isn't he a dear little boy?'
Paul Ponsonby laughs and says, 'I I think him rather the _enfant terrible_, but I suppose women are naturally fond of children, even taken as a whole; it does not matter much what they are like taken singly.'
Some one has begun to sing and Philippa does not answer, but when the song is finished, she asks the name of an old lady who is sitting on the sofa at the farther end of the room.
'The one with the blue feather, that's Lady Dadford,' says Ponsonby, 'and that's her daughter standing by her, Lady Anne; she is very clever; but surely they're some sort of relation to you, I know the old lady comes here very often.'
'Well, child,' exclaims little Mrs Seaton, coming up and laying her hand on Philippa's shoulder; 'they have nearly all gone, thank goodness, I am afraid you have been very dull, eh?'
Philippa laughs, while Paul twirling his moustache says, 'You know I've been talking to Miss Seaton for the last half hour, as you told me to, next time I shall not obey you if this is all the thanks I get.'
Philippa looks up quickly, so this is why he has been talking to her. 'It was very good of you,' she says in a very polite tone, 'very kind, but you need not have troubled yourself so much, I am quite happy watching people.'
'My dear child, what an absurd creature you are,' exclaims her sister-in-law, 'but come with me now I want to introduce you to two or three people--'
'What did I say to annoy her,' thinks Paul, and then seizing the first opportunity he makes for the door, but his sister stops him on the threshold.
'Oh, Paul, do be a dear,' she says, 'and get some places for us for the play, I don't care what, only let it be somewhere proper, for Philippa's sake not mine, get them for to-morrow night, and come and dine here beforehand.'
'All right,' he answers, 'I shall probably look in during the morning. Ta ta.'
Mabel Seaton is a great favourite. She is not what one would call pretty, but she possesses a bright, cheery face, which is reflected in miniature in her son Teddy, who is as his uncle says rather the '_enfant terrible!_' but do not say so before his mother, or her wrath would be dire. Her husband George is really the only person who dares to interfere concerning the conduct of that small personage.
Philippa, who up till now has lived with an aunt in Switzerland, having reached the age of eighteen, has come over to England to be presented and enter into the vortex of London society. So it is to quite another world she has come, and she wonders if she will be happy. Life is such a strange thing, so many beginnings and so few endings.
But the theatre is hardly the place for melancholy meditations, and she is sitting in the stalls of the L----. Mabel on one side, Paul Ponsonby on the other; the latter has become deeply interested in Philippa, and wonders what sort of a woman she will become--a coquette, a flirt? He glances at her fair, childish face and sighs. The curtain goes up, but he does not see the scene before him; no, 'tis a woman's face he seems to see, a pale face, with large brown eyes that are fixed on him with a look of--pshaw! what had love to do with her. Time had been when love for that woman had filled his whole being,