The Two Vanrevels | Page 6

eye in such matters, and also because the
slandered gentleman could assume a manner when he chose to, whether
or not he possessed it. At his own table he exhaled a hospitable
graciousness which, from a man of known evil temper, carried the
winsomeness of surprise. When he wooed, it was with an air of stately
devotion, combined with that knowingness which sometimes offsets for
a widower the tendency a girl has to giggle at him; and the combination
had been, once or twice, too much for even the alluring Crailey.
Mr. Carewe lived in an old-fashioned house on the broad, quiet, shady
street which bore his name. There was a wide lawn in front, shadowy
under elm and locust trees, and bounded by thick shrubberies. A long
garden, fair with roses and hollyhocks, lay outside the library windows,
an old- time garden, with fine gravel paths and green arbors; drowsed

over in summer-time by the bees, while overhead the locust rasped his
rusty cadences the livelong day; and a faraway sounding love-note
from the high branches brought to mind the line, like an old refrain:
"The voice of the turtle was heard in the land."
Between the garden and the carriage gates there was a fountain where a
bronze boy with the dropsy (but not minding it) lived in a perpetual
bath from a green goblet held over his head. Nearby, a stone sun-dial
gleamed against a clump of lilac bushes; and it was upon this spot that
the white kitten introduced Thomas Vanrevel to Miss Carewe.
Upon the morning after her arrival, having finished her piano-forte
practice, touched her harp twice, and arpeggioed the Spanish Fandango
on her guitar, Miss Betty read two paragraphs of "Gilbert" (for she was
profoundly determined to pursue her tasks with diligence), but the open
windows disclosing a world all sunshine and green leaves, she threw
the book aside with a good conscience, and danced out to the garden.
There, coming upon a fuzzy, white ball rolling into itself spirally on a
lazy pathway, she pounced at it, whereupon the thing uncurled with
lightning swiftness, and fled, more like a streak than a kitten, down the
drive, through the open gates and into the street, Miss Betty in full cry.
Across the way there chanced to be strolling a young lady in blue,
accompanied by a gentleman whose leisurely gait gave no indication of
the maneuvering he had done to hasten their walk into its present
direction. He was apparently thirty or thirty-one, tall, very straight, dark,
smooth- shaven, his eyes keen, deep-set, and thoughtful, and his high
white hat, white satin cravat, and careful collar, were evidence of an
elaboration of toilet somewhat unusual in Rouen for the morning; also,
he was carrying a pair of white gloves in his hand and dangled a
slender ebony cane from his wrist. The flying kitten headed toward the
couple, when, with a celerity only to be accounted for on the theory that
his eye had been fixed on the Carewe gateway for some time previous
to this sudden apparition, the gentleman leaped in front of the fugitive.
The kitten attempted a dodge to pass; the gentleman was there before it.
The kitten feinted; the gentleman was altogether too much on the spot.

Immediately--and just as Miss Carewe, flushed and glowing, ran into
the street--the small animal doubled, evaded Miss Betty's frantic clutch,
re- entered the gateway, and attempted a disappearance into the lilac
bushes, instead of going round them, only to find itself, for a fatal two
seconds, in difficulties with the close-set thicket of stems.
In regard to the extraordinary agility of which the pursuing gentleman
as capable, it is enough to say that he caught the cat. He emerged from
the lilacs holding it in one hand, his gloves and white hat in the other,
and presented himself before Miss Betty with a breathlessness not
entirely attributable to his exertions.
For a moment, as she came running toward him and he met her flashing
look, bright with laughter and recognition and haste, he stammered. A
thrill nothing less than delirious sent the blood up behind his brown
cheeks, for he saw that she, too, knew that this was the second time
their eyes had met. Naturally, at that time he could not know how many
other gentlemen were to feel that same thrill (in their cases, also,
delirious, no less) with the same, accompanying, mysterious feeling,
which came just before Miss Betty's lashes fell, that one had found, at
last, a precious thing, lost long since in childhood, or left, perhaps,
upon some other planet in a life ten thousand years ago.
He could not speak at once, but when he could, "Permit me, madam,"
he said solemnly, offering the captive, "to restore your