TEMPLE BAR. DECEMBER 1871. "Good-bye, Sweetheart!" A TALE IN THREE PARTS. BY RHODA BROUGHTON, AUTHOR OF "COMETH UP AS A FLOWER,” ETC. CHAPTER III. WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS. Ir is afternoon tea-time, and that high festival is always held in the hall. Scrope knows that there is no hope of bézique to-night, and Paul sees that a tête-à-tête is unlikely. They have therefore retired to the smoking-room, and, with their enmity temporarily smothered, and their friendship as temporarily re-born, are smoking the pipe of peace together. Only the three sisters lounge round the fire in easy-chairs; the fire, in burning, makes the low quiet noise that is fire's talk. "How I ever shall bring myself to call him 'Paul,' I am sure I do not know," says Sylvia, gently waving to and fro the hand-screen with which she is shading her face. "If it were a three or even a two-syllabled name -Augustus, or Reginald, or Henry-it would not sound half so familiar; but 'Paul! there is something so abrupt and uncompromising about it; however, I managed to bring it out at luncheon. I said, 'Paul, will you cut me some partridge?' Did you hear? He looked so pleased." "I do not think he heard," says Jemima, maliciously. "I always tell Lenore that he is like Dr. Johnson-deaf while he is eating." "Oh, but he did, though!" retorts Sylvia, quickly, getting rather pink. "I knew it by his face; one can always tell by a man's face when he is rubbed the right way." Jemima looks across sceptically at Lenore, who smiles lazily back. "Do you remark that he never calls me anything but 'Mrs. Prodgers'?" continues Sylvia, complacently; "many a man would have taken advantage of his situation to Sylvia' me at once. I think it so VOL. XXXIV. B particularly gentlemanlike of him, and I shall tell him so as soon as we get on a little more easy terms; you might give him a hint, Lenore, that he need not be so ceremonious for the future." "I do not think it has anything to say to gentlemanlikeness," replies Jemima, who has retained all her old aversion for hearing Mr. Le Mesurier complimented. "He does not remember your Christian name.' Impossible!" cries Sylvia, now thoroughly nettled. "How can he help knowing it when he hears Charlie Scrope calling me by it fifty times in the course of the day? By-the-bye, I must tell that boy that it will not do for him to be Christian-naming me before all those people at the Websters to-night. Poor fellow! he means no harm; but I suppose it is one of the penalties of being left so early alone in the world, that one sets people's tongues wagging more easily than others do." "What a trial the Websters are!" says Jemima, groaning. "To dine out on Christmas Day! It would be a hardly greater heathenism to give a ball on Good Friday!" "And such a regiment of us going, too!" says Lenore, sitting up in her chair, and pushing back the restive hair-pins that her reclining attitude has displaced. "One, two, three, four, five-like a flock of ducks waddling into the room one after another." "I do not see why we need waddle!" says Sylvia, with dignity. "I do hate visiting in a patriarchal manner with all my tribe!" returns Lenore, energetically. Her betrothed is quite of her mind; suavity of manner is never his forte; but he has difficulty in manifesting even his usual amount of complaisance, when he discovers what his fate is to be. "Oh, Mrs. Prodgers, could not you leave Lenore and me at home? We should never be missed out of such a multitude," he says, vainly hoping for a reprieve at the last moment. "There is something so appalling in being trotted out as two people who are going to commit matrimony; an engaged couple are always everybody's legitimate butt." "I do not think you need be afraid of that," says Sylvia, speaking with the happy mixture of sisterliness and coquetry with which she always addresses her future connection. "You see you have never been seen with us before, and Char-, I mean Mr. Scrope, has always been en évidence. I think he is generally looked upon as the happy man. Lenore, would not Paul have laughed the other night to see the way in which the Ansons manoeuvred to let you have the morning-room to yourselves? If they are there to-night, we may have quite a pleasant little mystification." At the conclusion of this speech, Scrope smiles oddly, Jemima reddens, Lenore rushes headlong into a remark that has neither head, tail, nor middle, and Paul-Paul is putting on his overcoat; his face is turned away-one cannot see it. |