Molly Bawn | Page 5

spirit? Or a lunatic? Yes, that must be it.
Meanwhile through the moonlight--in it--comes Molly, very slowly, a perfect creature, in trailing, snowy robes. Luttrell, forgetting the inevitable cigar,--a great concession,--stands mutely regarding her as, with warm parted lips and a smile, half amused, half wondering, she gazes back at him.
"Even a plain woman may gain beauty from a moonbeam; what, then, must a lovely woman seem when clothed in its pure rays?"
"You are welcome,--very welcome," says Molly, at length, in her low, soft voice.
"Thank you," returns he, mechanically, still lost in conjecture.
"I am not a fairy, nor a spirit, nor yet a vision," murmurs Molly, now openly amused. "Have no fear. See," holding out to him a slim cool hand; "touch me, and be convinced, I am only Molly Massereene."
He takes the hand and holds it closely, still entranced. Already--even though three minutes have scarcely marked their acquaintance--he is dimly conscious that there might possibly be worse things in this world than a perpetual near-to "only Molly Massereene."
"So you did come," she goes on, withdrawing her fingers slowly but positively, and with a faint uplifting of her straight brows, "after all. I was so afraid you wouldn't, you were so long. John--we all thought you had thrown us over."
To have Beauty declare herself overjoyed at the mere fact of your presence is, under any circumstances, intoxicating. To have such an avowal made beneath the romantic light of a summer moon is maddening.
"You cared?" says Luttrell, in hopeful doubt.
"Cared!" with a low gay laugh. "I should think I did care. I quite longed for you to come. If you only knew as well as I do the terrible, never-ending dullness of this place, you would understand how one could long for the coming of any one."
Try as he will, he cannot convince himself that the termination of this sentence is as satisfactory as its commencement.
"When the evening wore on," with a little depressed shake of her head, "and still you made no sign, and I began to feel sure it was all too good to be true, and that you were about to disappoint me and plead some hateful excuse by the morning post, I almost hated you, and was never in such a rage in my life. But," again holding out her hand to him, with a charming smile "I forgive you now."
"Then forgive me one thing more,--my ignorance," says Luttrell, retaining the fingers this time with much increased firmness. "And tell me who you are."
"Don't you know, really? You never heard of me from John or---- What a fall to my pride, and when in my secret heart I had almost flattered myself that----"
"What?" eagerly.
"Oh, nothing--only---- By the bye, now you have confessed yourself ignorant of my existence, what did bring you down to this uninteresting village?" All this with the most perfect na?vet��.
"A desire," says Luttrell, smiling in spite of himself, "to see again your--what shall I say?"--hesitating--"father?"
"Nonsense," says Molly, quickly, with a little frown. "How could you think John my father? When he looks so young, too. I hope you are not stupid: we shall never get on if you are. How could he be my father?"
"How could he be your brother?"
"Step-brother, then," says Molly, unwillingly. "I will acknowledge it for this once only. But never again, mind, as he is dearer to me than half a dozen real brothers. You like him very much, don't you?" examining him anxiously. "You must, to take the trouble to come all the way down here to see him."
"I do, indeed, more than I can say," replies the young man, with wise heartiness that is yet unfeigned. "He has stood to me too often in the old school-days to allow of my ever forgetting him. I would go farther than Morley to meet him, after a lengthened absence such as mine has been."
"India?" suggests Molly, blandly.
"Yes." Here they both pause, and Molly's eyes 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