Master of His Fate | Page 6

out into the air and the sunshine."
The carriage was the doctor's own; his mother, although the widow of a
Court physician, was too poor to maintain much equipage, but she
made what use she pleased of her son's possessions. When Lady
Lefevre saw Julius at the carriage-door, she broke into smiles and cries
of welcome.
"Where have you been this long, long while, Julius?" said she. "This is
Julius Courtney, Nora. You remember Nora, Julius, when she was a
little girl in frocks?"
"She now wears remarkable gowns," chimed in the doctor.
"Which," said Julius, "I have no doubt are becoming."
"My brother," said Nora, with a sunny 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