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Page 39
'Hush! Cecilia's singing!' she admonished him with an unexpected smile,
as her fingers fell from her face.
'Oh, you have been making fun of me.' He was vastly relieved. 'He beats
you--at chess--or at lawn-tennis?'
'Does one wear a high-necked dress to conceal the traces of chess, or
lawn-tennis?'
He had not noticed her dress before, save for its spiritual whiteness.
Susceptible though he was to beautiful shoulders, Winifred's enchanting
face had been sufficiently distracting. Now the thought of physical
bruises gave him a second spasm of righteous horror. That delicate
rose-leaf flesh abraded and lacerated!
'The ruffian! Does he use a stick or a fist?'
'Both! But as a rule he just takes me by the arms and shakes me like a
terrier a rat. I'm all black and blue now.'
'Poor butterfly!' he murmured poetically.
'Why did I tell you?' she murmured back with subtler poetry.
The poet thrilled in every vein. 'Love at first sight', of which he had
often read and often written, was then a reality! It could be as mutual,
too, as Romeo's and Juliet's. But how awkward that Juliet should be
married and her husband a Bill Sykes in broad-cloth!
II
Mrs. Glamorys herself gave 'At Homes', every Sunday afternoon, and so, on
the morrow, after a sleepless night mitigated by perpended sonnets, the
love-sick young tutor presented himself by invitation at the beautiful
old house in Hampstead. He was enchanted to find his heart's mistress
set in an eighteenth-century frame of small-paned windows and of high
oak-panelling, and at once began to image her dancing minuets and
playing on virginals. Her husband was absent, but a broad band of velvet
round Winifred's neck was a painful reminder of his possibilities.
Winifred, however, said it was only a touch of sore throat caught in the
garden. Her eyes added that there was nothing in the pathological
dictionary which she would not willingly have caught for the sake of
those divine, if draughty moments; but that, alas! it was more than a
mere bodily ailment she had caught there.
There were a great many visitors in the two delightfully quaint rooms,
among whom he wandered disconsolate and admired, jealous of her
scattered smiles, but presently he found himself seated by her side on
a 'cosy corner' near the open folding-doors, with all the other guests
huddled round a violinist in the inner room. How Winifred had managed it
he did not know but she sat plausibly in the outer room, awaiting
newcomers, and this particular niche was invisible, save to a determined
eye. He took her unresisting hand--that dear, warm hand, with its
begemmed artistic fingers, and held it in uneasy beatitude. How
wonderful! She--the beautiful and adored hostess, of whose sweetness and
charm he heard even her own guests murmur to one another--it was her
actual flesh-and-blood hand that lay in his--thrillingly tangible. Oh,
adventure beyond all merit, beyond all hoping!
But every now and then, the outer door facing them would open on some
newcomer, and John had hastily to release her soft magnetic fingers and
sit demure, and jealously overhear her effusive welcome to those
innocent intruders, nor did his brow clear till she had shepherded them
within the inner fold. Fortunately, the refreshments were in this
section, so that once therein, few of the sheep strayed back, and the
jiggling wail of the violin was succeeded by a shrill babble of tongues
and the clatter of cups and spoons. 'Get me an ice, please--strawberry,'
she ordered John during one of these forced intervals in manual
flirtation; and when he had steered laboriously to and fro, he found a
young actor beside her in his cosy corner, and his jealous fancy almost
saw _their_ hands dispart. He stood over them with a sickly smile, while
Winifred ate her ice. When he returned from depositing the empty saucer,
the player-fellow was gone, and in remorse for his mad suspicion he
stooped and reverently lifted her fragrant finger-tips to his lips. The
door behind his back opened abruptly.
'Goodbye,' she said, rising in a flash. The words had the calm
conventional cadence, and instantly extorted from him--amid all his
dazedness--the corresponding 'Goodbye'. When he turned and saw it was Mr.
Glamorys who had come in, his heart leapt wildly at the nearness of his
escape. As he passed this masked ruffian, he nodded perfunctorily and
received a cordial smile. Yes, he was handsome and fascinating enough
externally, this blonde savage.
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