Guy Livingstone; or, 'Thorough'. George A. Lawrence
in.
"It is far the most touching thing I ever heard. Poor child, how you must have suffered! I wonder you ever smiled again. How well she sings, does she not? when she does not try to go too high."
"Don't be severe," Guy retorted; "you may have to sing yourself some day. You prefer talking, though? Well, with a well-managed contralto, it comes nearly to the same thing, and I suppose you consider the world in general is not worthy of it?"
Almost imperceptibly, but very meaningly, her glance turned to where I sat close beside her.
"How absurd! you know why I don't sing often. To-night it would be—too cruel. (Flora's idea of modest merit was peculiar.) Now tell me, what are you going to ride to-morrow? We shall all go and see them throw off."
Without answering her question, he leaned over her, and said something too low for me to hear, which made her color brighten.
From a distant corner two ancient virgins, long past "mark of mouth," surveyed the proceedings with faces like moulds of lemon-ice. Flora glanced toward them this time, and said demurely, making a gesture of crossing her arms a à la Napoléon I., "Take care; from the summit of yonder sofa forty ages behold you."
The caution was a challenge; and so her hearer interpreted it as he sank down beside her.
I seemed to be lapsing rapidly into the terrible third that spoils sport, so I left them; but not all the adjurations of Godfrey Parndon invoking his favorite antagonist to the whist-table could draw Guy from his post again that evening.
I know men who would have given five years of life for the whisper that glided into his ear as he gave Miss Bellasys her candle on retiring, ten for the Parthian glance that shot its arrow home.
CHAPTER IX.
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