Master of His Fate | Page 6

smile, "is jealous; because, being a doctor, he must wear only dowdy clothes of dingy colours."
"We have finished at school and college, and been presented at Court," laughed Lady Lefevre.
"And," broke in the brother, "we have had cards engraved with our full name, Leonora."
"With all this," said Lady Lefevre, "I hope you won't be afraid of us."
"I see no reason," said Julius. "For, if I may say so, I like everything in Nature, and it seems to me Nature has had more to do with the finishing you speak of than the schoolmistress or the college professor."
"There he is already," laughed Lady Lefevre, "with his equivocal compliments. I shouldn't wonder if he says that, my dear, because you have not yet had more than a word to say for yourself."
By that time Lefevre and Julius were seated, and the carriage was rolling along towards the Park. Julius sat immediately opposite Lady Lefevre, but he included both her and Nora in his talk and his bright glances. The doctor sat agreeably suffused with delight and wonder. No one, as has been seen, had a higher opinion of Courtney's rare powers, or had had more various evidence of them, than Lefevre, but even he had never known his friend so brilliant. He was instinct with life and eloquence. His face shone as with an inner light, and his talk was bright, searching, and ironical. The amazing thing, however, was that Julius had as stimulating and intoxicating an influence on Nora as, it was clear, Nora had on him. His sister had not appeared to Lefevre hitherto more than a beautiful, healthy, shy girl of tolerable intelligence; now she showed that she had brilliance and wit, and, moreover, that she understood Julius as one native of a strange realm understands another. When they entered the Park, they were the observed of all. And, indeed, Leonora Lefevre was a vision to excite the worship of those least inclined to idolatry of Nature. She was of the noblest type of English beauty, and she seemed as calmly unconscious of its excellence and rarity as one of the grand Greek women of the Parthenon. She had, however, a sensuous fulness and bloom, a queenly carriage of head and neck, a clearness of feature, and a liquid kindness of eye that suggested a deep potentiality of passion.
They drove round the Row, and round again, and they talked and laughed their fill of wisdom and frivolity and folly. To be foolish wisely and gracefully is a rare attainment. When they had almost completed their third round, Julius (who had finished a marvellous story of a fairy princess and a cat) said, "I can see you are fond of beasts, Miss Lefevre. I should like to take you to the Zoological Gardens and show you my favourites there. May we go now, Lady Lefevre?"
"By all means," said Lady Lefevre, "let us go. What do you say, John?"
"Oh, wherever you like, mother," answered her son.
Arrived in the Gardens, Julius took possession of his companions, and exerted all his arts to charm and fascinate. He led the ladies from cage to cage, from enclosure to enclosure, showed himself as familiar with the characters and habits of their wild denizens as a farmer is with those of his stock, and they responded to his strange calls, to his gentleness and fearlessness, with an alert understanding and confidence beautiful to see. His favourites were certain creatures of the deer species, which crowded to their fences to sniff his clothes, and to lick his hands, which he abandoned to their caresses with manifest satisfaction. His example encouraged the queenly Nora and her sprightly mother to feed the beautiful creatures with bread and buns, and to feel the suffusion of pleasure derived from the contact of their soft lips with the palm of the hand. After that they were scarcely astonished when, without bravado, but clearly with simple confidence and enjoyment, Julius put his hand within the bars of the lion's cage and scratched the ears of a lioness, murmuring the while in a strange tongue such fond sounds as only those use who are on the best terms with animals. The great brute rose to his touch, closing its eyes, and bearing up its head like a cat.
Then came an incident that deeply impressed the Lefevres. Julius went to a cage in which, he said, there was a recent arrival--a leopard from the "Land of the Setting Sun," the romantic land of the Moors. The creature crouched sulking in the back of the cage. Julius tapped on the bars, and entreated her in the language of her native land, "Ya, dudu! ya, lellatsi!" She bounded to him with a "wir-r-r" of delight, leaned and rubbed herself against the bars, and gave herself up to