Lippa | Page 9

which play two different tunes at the same time. If a deaf man suddenly recovered his hearing at a cattle show, I am sure he would wish himself deaf again. However, some people enjoy cattle shows, I do not, but that is neither here nor there.
Lord Dadford, J.P. for the county and owner of some fine short horns, is surrounded by gaitered and pot-hatted men, who all appear to be talking at once. Helmdon conducting Philippa and his sister with the ever constant Jimmy, carefully fights shy of his father.
'What luck to have met you,' he exclaims as they run up against a pretty woman, Mrs Lippingcott of course, and forthwith they launch into an eager conversation with humble apologies from him and earnest entreaties that she will grace the ball with her appearance, and with any one who may be staying with her.
'Oh, how do you do, Miss Seaton?' makes Lippa turn, who is in earnest conversation with Dalrymple, and see Harkness standing before her. She would have liked to give vent to a naughty little expression, but she merely bows saying--
'I had no idea of meeting you here, isn't it a lovely day?'
'Beautiful,' he replies, 'I am stopping with the Lippingcotts for a few days; really the country is quite delightful after London.'
'Delicious,' replies Lippa, moving on leaving Harkness gazing at her and Dalrymple; is that young beggar going to cut him out, it looks uncommonly like it. Lucky fellow he is, thinks the Captain, winning over that race last month when the odds were dead against him, and now--
'Thank goodness!' ejaculates Miss Seaton, finding herself free from her admirer.
'What for?' asks Dalrymple.
'Why, to get rid of him of course.'
'Poor man,' says Jimmy pensively.
'Wherefore?'
'Because he has evidently incurred your displeasure.'
'Oh,' with a little laugh, 'is my displeasure such a very dreadful thing.'
'It would be to me,' is the reply.
'Well, if you're very good, I will try and be pleased with you, it might be unpleasant if we--'
'Will it require a great deal of trying?'
'That depends,' says Miss Seaton, glancing up in his face, to find he is looking at her rather more earnestly than is necessary. But the conversation is interrupted by Lady Anne.
Poor Lady Anne, there is a romance connected with her life, that nobody knows of save her parents, and they have almost forgotten it. A romance in which a young officer figures prominently; when Lady Anne first came out she fell desperately in love with him, and he with her, they plighted their troth at a London ball; but her parents said she was too young to marry just then, and it was agreed to wait a year. But war broke out and his regiment was 'ordered to the front.' Oh! the sorrow conveyed in those words, how many, many went out like Lady Anne's lover and never returned, how many lives like hers were blighted in consequence. 'God bless you, Dick,' she had said the night before he started, 'and I hope you will come back soon.'
'Soon,' he had repeated, 'dearest, I may never come back again.'
He was right, for he fell on the field of A----, found dead where the fight had been fiercest; and Lady Anne's heart was broken. She did not die of grief, nor did she appear to the world as hopelessly crushed, but went on living just the same, with a feeling of aching emptiness, that is, oh, so hard to bear, and she shut away from prying eyes the picture of her young lover, and round her neck she hung the crystal heart he had given her, whereon his name was inscribed.--Dick.
CHAPTER V
'Love me, for I love you,' and answer me 'Love me, for I love you.'--CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
'Tis the night of the ball, dinner is over and the house party is collected in the hall, waiting the arrival of the guests. The fiddles are scraping away in the drawing-room, where the furniture having been taken away and the carpet removed, the floor looks inviting and 'is perfectly delicious' owns Philippa, having performed a pas seul thereon, before anyone was down. She looks extremely pretty to-night in a quaint, little white satin dress, her hair fluffed all round her head, and tied up with pale green ribbons.
At this moment she is striving in vain to button up one of Chubby's gloves. 'It's awfully good of you,' he says. 'I can't think why they are so tight, what--'
'If I don't button it this time,' she replies, 'I really can't try any more, for I have not got my own on yet, and I know they'll begin to dance in a moment.'
'You'll let me have the first, won't you?' he says.
'Certainly,' she answers, all her attention absorbed in the button which is just half in the button-hole, one little poke and