A Woman-Hater. Charles Reade
struck the Anglo-Saxon flirt at her feet with amazement. Not having good enough under his skin to sympathize with that pious impulse, he first stagnated a little while; and then, not to be silent altogether, made his little, stale, commonplace comment on what she had told him. “Why, it is like a novel.”
“A very unromantic one,” replied Zoe.
“I don't know that. I have read very interesting novels with fewer new characters than this: there's a dark beauty, and a fair, and a duenna with an eagle eye and an aquiline nose.”
“Hush!” said Zoe: “that is her room;” and pointed to a chamber door that opened into the apartment.
Oh, marvelous female instinct! The duenna in charge was at that moment behind that very door, and her eye and her ear at the key-hole, turn about.
Severne continued his remarks, but in a lower voice.
“Then there's a woman-hater and a man-hater: good for dialogue.”
Now this banter did not please Zoe; so she fixed her eyes upon Severne, and said, “You forget the principal figure—a mysterious young gentleman who looks nineteen, and is twenty-nine, and was lost sight of in England nine years ago. He has been traveling ever since, and where-ever he went he flirted; we gather so much from his accomplishment in the art; fluent, not to say voluble at times, but no egotist, for he never tells you anything about himself, nor even about his family, still less about the numerous affaires de coeur in which he has been engaged. Perhaps he is reserving it all for the third volume.”
The attack was strong and sudden, but it failed. Severne, within the limits of his experience, was a consummate artist, and this situation was not new to him. He cast one gently reproachful glance on her, then lowered his eyes to the carpet, and kept them there. “Do you think,” said he, in a low, dejected voice, “it can be any pleasure to a man to relate the follies of an idle, aimless life? and to you, who have given me higher aspirations, and made me awfully sorry, I cannot live my whole life over again. I can't bear to think of the years I have wasted,” said he; “and how can I talk to you, whom I reverence, of the past follies I despise? No, pray don't ask me to risk your esteem. It is so dear to me.”
Then this artist put in practice a little maneuver he had learned of compressing his muscles and forcing a little unwilling water into his eyes. So, at the end of his pretty little speech, he raised two gentle, imploring eyes, with half a tear in each of them. To be sure, Nature assisted his art for once; he did bitterly regret, but out of pure egotism, the years he had wasted, and wished with all his heart he had never known any woman but Zoe Vizard.
The combination of art and sincerity was too much for the guileless and inexperienced Zoe. She was grieved at the pain she had given, and rose to retire, for she felt they were both on dangerous ground; but, as she turned away, she made a little, deprecating gesture, and said, softly, “Forgive me.”
That soft tone gave Severne courage, and that gesture gave him an opportunity. He seized her hand, murmured, “Angel of goodness!” and bestowed a long, loving kiss on her hand that made it quiver under his lips.
“Oh!” cried Miss Maitland, bursting into the room at the nick of time, yet feigning amazement.
Fanny heard the ejaculations, and whipped away from Harrington into the window. Zoe, with no motive but her own coyness, had already snatched her hand away from Severne.
But both young ladies were one moment too late. The eagle eye of a terrible old maid had embraced the entire situation, and they saw it had.
Harrington Vizard, Esq., smoked on, with his back to the group. But the rest were a picture—the mutinous face and keen eyes of Fanny Dover, bristling with defense, at the window; Zoe blushing crimson, and newly started away from her too-enterprising wooer; and the tall, thin, grim old maid, standing stiff, as sentinel, at the bedroom door, and gimleting both her charges alternately with steel-gray orbs; she seemed like an owl, all eyes and beak.
When the chaperon had fixed the situation thoroughly, she stalked erect into the room, and said, very expressively, “I am afraid I disturb you.”
Zoe, from crimson, blushed scarlet, and hung her head; but Fanny was ready.
“La! aunt,” said she, ironically, and with pertness infinite, “you know you are always welcome. Where ever have you been all this time? We were afraid we had lost you.”
Aunt fired her pistol in reply: “I was not far off—most fortunately.”
Zoe, finding that, even under crushing circumstances, Fanny had fight in her, glided instantly to her side, and Aunt Maitland opened battle all round.
“May I ask, sir,” said she to Severne, with a horrible smile, “what you were doing when I came in?”
Zoe clutched Fanny, and both awaited Mr. Severne's reply for one moment with keen anxiety.
“My dear Miss Maitland,” said that able young man, very respectfully, yet with a sort of cheerful readiness, as if he were delighted at her deigning to question him, “to tell you the truth, I was admiring Miss Vizard's diamond ring.”
Fanny tittered; Zoe blushed again at such a fib and such aplomb.
“Oh, indeed,” said Miss Maitland; “you were admiring it very close, sir.”
“It is like herself—it will bear inspection.”
This was wormwood to Miss Maitland. “Even in our ashes live their wonted fires;” and, though she was sixty, she disliked to hear a young woman praised. She bridled, then returned to the attack.
“Next time you wish to inspect it, you had better ask her to take it off, and show you.”
“May I, Miss Maitland?” inquired the ingenuous youth. “She would not think that a liberty?”
His mild effrontery staggered her for a moment, and she glared at him, speechless, but soon recovered, and said, bitterly, “Evidently not.” With this she turned her back on him rather ungraciously, and opened fire on her own sex.
“Zoe!” (sharply).
“Yes, aunt.” (faintly)
“Tell your brother—if he can leave off smoking—I wish to speak to him.”
Zoe hung her head, and was in no hurry to bring about the proposed conference.
While she deliberated, says Fanny, with vast alacrity, “I'll tell him, aunt.”
“Oh, Fanny!” murmured Zoe, in a reproachful whisper.
“All right!” whispered Fanny in reply, and whipped out on to the balcony. “Here's Aunt Maitland wants to know if you ever leave off smoking;” and she threw a most aggressive manner into the query.
The big man replied, composedly, “Tell her I do—at meals and prayers; but I always sleep with a pipe in my mouth—heavily insured!”
“Well, then, you mustn't; for she has something very particular to say to you when you've done smoking.”
“Something particular! That means something disagreeable. Tell her I shall be smoking all day to-day.”
Fanny danced into the room and said, “He says he shall be smoking all day, under the circumstances.”
Miss Maitland gave this faithful messenger the look of a basilisk, and flounced to her own room. The young ladies instantly stepped out on the balcony, and got one on each side of Harrington, with the feminine instinct of propitiation; for they felt sure the enemy would tell, soon or late.
“What does the old cat want to talk to me about?” said Harrington, lazily, to Fanny.
It was Zoe who replied:
“Can't you guess, dear?” said she, tenderly—“our misconduct.” Then she put her head on his shoulder, as much as to say, “But we have a more