Molly Bawn | Page 6

fall on her imprisoned
hand. She is so evidently bent on being again ungenerous that Luttrell
forces himself to break silence, with the mean object of distracting her
thoughts.
"Is it at this hour you usually 'take your walks abroad?'" he asks,
smoothly.
"Oh, no," laughing; "you must not think that. To-night there was an
excuse for me. And if there is blame in the matter, you must take it. But
for your slothfulness, your tardiness, your unpardonable laziness,"
spitefully, "my temper would not have driven me forth."
"But," reproachfully, "you do not ask the cause of my delay. How
would you like to be first inveigled into taking a rickety vehicle in the
last stage of dissipation and then deposited by that vehicle, without an
instant's warning, upon your mother earth? For my part, I didn't like it
at all."
"I'm so sorry," says Molly, sweetly. "Did all that really happen to you,
and just while I was abusing you with all my might and main? I think I
shall have to be very good to you to make up for it."
"I think so too," says Luttrell, gravely. "My ignominious breakdown
was nothing in comparison with a harsh word thrown at me by you. I

feel a deep sense of injury upon me."
"It all comes of our being in what the papers call 'poor circumstances,'"
says Molly, lightly. "Now, when I marry and you come to see me, I
shall send a carriage and a spirited pair of grays to meet you at the
station. Think of that."
"I won't," says Luttrell; "because I don't believe I would care to see you
at all when--you are married." Here, with a rashness unworthy of him,
he presses, ever so gently, the slender fingers within his own. Instantly
Miss Massereene, with a marked ignoring of the suggestion in his last
speech, returns to her forgotten charge.
"I don't want to inconvenience you," she says, demurely, with downcast
lids, "but when you have quite done with my hand I think I should like
it again. You see it is awkward being without it, as it is the right one."
"I'm not proud," says Luttrell, modestly. "I will try to make myself
content if you will give me the left one."
At this they both laugh merrily; and, believe me, when two people so
laugh together, there is very little ice left to be broken.
"And are you really glad I have come?" says Luttrell, bending, the
better to see into her pretty face. "It sounds so unlikely."
"When one is starving, even dry bread is acceptable," returns Molly,
with a swift but cruel glance.
"I refuse to understand you. You surely do not mean----"
"I mean this, that you are not to lay too much stress on the fact of my
having said----"
"Well, Luttrell, where are you, old fellow? I suppose you thought you
were quite forgotten. Couldn't come a moment sooner,--what with
Letitia's comments on your general appearance and my own comments
on my tobacco's disappearance. However, here I am at last. Have you

been lonely?"
"Not very," says Mr. Luttrell, sotto voce, his eyes fixed on Molly.
"It is John," whispers that young lady mysteriously. "Won't I catch it if
he finds me out here so late without a shawl? I must run.
Good-night,"--she moves away from him quickly, but before many
steps have separated them turns again, and, with her fingers on her lips,
breathes softly, kindly--"until to-morrow." After which she waves him
a last faint adieu and disappears.
CHAPTER III.
"In my lady's chamber."
When John Massereene was seven years old his mother died. When he
was seventeen his father had the imprudence to run away with the
favorite daughter of a rich man,--which crime was never forgiven. Had
there been the slightest excuse for her conduct it might have been
otherwise, but in the eyes of her world there was none. That an
Amherst of Herst Royal should be guilty of such a plebeian trick as
"falling passionately in love" was bad enough, but to have her bestow
that love upon a man at least eighteen years her senior, an Irishman, a
mere engineer, with no money to speak of, with nothing on earth to
recommend him beyond a handsome face, a charming manner, and a
heart too warm ever to grow old, was not to be tolerated for a moment.
And Eleanor Amherst, from the hour of her elopement, was virtually
shrouded and laid within her grave so far as her own family was
concerned.
Not that they need have hurried over her requiem, as the poor soul was
practically laid there in the fourth year of her happy married life, dying
of the same fever that had carried off her husband two days before,