She hastily pulls up one of the blinds; and as old Miss Chesney opens the door and advances up the room, young Miss Chesney rather turns her shoulder to her and stares moodily out of the window. But Aunt Priscilla is not to be daunted.
"Well, Lilian," she says, in a hopeful tone, and with an amount of faith admirable under the circumstances, "I trust you have been thinking it over favorably, and that – "
"Thinking what over?" asks Lilian; which interruption is a mean subterfuge.
" – And that the night has induced you to see your situation in its proper light."
"You speak as though I were the under house-maid," says Lilian with a faint sense of humor. "And yet the word suits me. Surely there never yet was a situation as mine. I wish my horrid cousin had been drowned in – . No, Aunt Priscilla, the night has not reformed me. On the contrary, it has demoralized me, through a dream. I dreamt I went to Chetwoode, and, lo! the very first night I slept beneath its roof the ceiling in my room gave way, and, falling, crushed me to fine powder. After such a ghastly warning do you still advise me to pack up and be off? If you do," says Lilian, solemnly, "my blood be on your head."
"Dreams go by contraries," quotes Miss Priscilla, sententiously. "I don't believe in them. Besides, from all I have heard of the Chetwoodes they are far too well regulated a family to have anything amiss with their ceilings."
"Oh, how you do add fuel to the fire that is consuming me!" exclaims Lilian, with a groan. "A well-regulated family! – what can be more awful? Ever since I have been old enough to reason I have looked with righteous horror upon a well-regulated family. Aunt Priscilla, if you don't change your tune I vow and protest I shall decide upon remaining here until my cousin takes me by the shoulders and places me upon the gravel outside."
"I thought, Lilian," says her aunt, severely, "you promised me yesterday to think seriously of what I have now been saying to you for a whole week without cessation."
"Well, so I am thinking," with a sigh. "It is the amount of thinking I have been doing for a whole week without cessation that is gradually turning my hair gray."
"It would be all very well," says Miss Priscilla, impatiently, "if I could remain with you; but I cannot. I must return to my duties." These duties consisted of persecuting poor little children every Sunday by compelling them to attend her Scriptural class (so she called it) and answer such questions from the Old Testament as would have driven any experienced divinity student out of his mind; and on week-days of causing much sorrow (and more bad language) to be disseminated among the women of the district by reason of her lectures on their dirt. "And your cousin is in London, and naturally will wish to take possession in person."
"How I wish poor papa had left the Park to me!" says Lilian, discontentedly, and somewhat irrelevantly.
"My dear child, I have explained to you at least a dozen times that such a gift was not in his power. It goes – that is, the Park, – to a male heir, and – "
"Yes, I know," petulantly. "Well, then I wish it had been in his power to leave it to me."
"And how about writing to Lady Chetwoode?" says Aunt Priscilla, giving up the argument in despair. (She is a wise woman.) "The sooner you do so the better."
"I hate strangers," says Lilian, mournfully. "They make me unhappy. Why can't I remain where I am? George or Archibald, or whatever his name is, might just as well let me have a room here. I'm sure the place is large enough. He need not grudge me one or two apartments. The left wing, for instance."
"Lilian," says Miss Chesney, rising from her chair, "how old are you? Is it possible that at eighteen you have yet to learn the meaning of the word 'propriety'? You – a young girl– to remain here alone with a young man!"
"He need never see me," says Lilian, quite unmoved by this burst of eloquence. "I should take very good care of that, as I know I shall detest him."
"I decline to listen to you," says Miss Priscilla, raising her hands to her ears. "You must be lost to all sense of decorum even to imagine such a thing. You and he in one house, how should you avoid meeting?"
"Well, even if we did meet," says Lilian, with a small rippling laugh impossible to quell, "I dare say he wouldn't bite me."
"No," – sternly, – "he would probably do worse. He would make love to you. Some instinct warns me," says Miss Priscilla, with the liveliest horror, gazing upon the exquisite, glowing face before her, "that within five days he would be making violent love to you."
"You strengthen my desire to stay," says Lilian, somewhat frivolously, "I should so like to say 'No' to him!"
"Lilian, you make me shudder," says Miss Priscilla, earnestly. "When I was your age, even younger, I had a full sense of the horror of allowing any man to mention my name lightly. I kept all men at arm's length, I suffered no jesting or foolish talking from them. And mark the result," says Miss Chesney, with pride: "I defy any one to say a word of me but what is admirable and replete with modesty."
"Did any one ever propose to you, auntie?" asks Miss Lilian with a naughty laugh.
"Certainly. I had many offers," replies Miss Priscilla, promptly, – which is one of the few lies she allows herself; "I was persecuted by suitors in my younger days; but I refused them all. And if you will take my advice, Lilian," says this virgin, with much solemnity, "you will never, never put yourself into clutches of a man." She utters this last word as though she would have said a tiger or a serpent, or anything else ruthless and bloodthirsty. "But all this is beside the question."
"It is, rather," says Lilian, demurely. But, suddenly brightening, "Between my dismal dreaming last night I thought of another plan."
"Another!" with open dismay.
"Yes," – triumphantly, – "it occurred to me that this bugbear my cousin might go abroad again. Like the Wandering Jew, he is always traveling; and who knows but he may take a fancy to visit the South Pole, or discover the Northwestern Passage, or go with Jules Verne to the centre of the earth? If so, why should not I remain here and keep house for him? What can be simpler?"
"Nothing," – tritely, – "but unfortunately he is not going abroad again."
"No! How do you know that?"
"Through Mr. Shrude, the solicitor."
"Ah!" says Lilian, in a despairing tone, "how unhappy I am! Though I might have known that wretched young man would be the last to do what is his palpable duty." There is a pause. Lilian's head sinks upon her hand; dejection shows itself in every feature. She sighs so heavily that Miss Priscilla's spirits rise and she assures herself the game is won. Rash hope.
Suddenly Lilian's countenance clears; she raises her head, and a faint smile appears within her eyes.
"Aunt Priscilla, I have yet another plan," she says, cheerfully.
"Oh, my dear, I do hope not," says poor Miss Chesney, almost on the verge of tears.
"Yes, and it emanated from you. Supposing I were to remain here, and he did fall in love with me, and married me: what then? Would not that solve the difficulty? Once the ceremony was performed he might go prying about all over the known globe for all that I should care. I should have my dear Park. I declare," says Lilian, waxing valiant, "had he but one eye, or did he appear before me with a wooden leg (which I hold to be the most contemptible of all things), nothing should induce me to refuse him under the circumstances."
"And are you going to throw yourself upon your cousin's generosity and actually ask him to take pity on you and make you his wife? Lilian, I fancied you had some pride," says Miss Chesney, gravely.
"So I have," says Lilian, with a repentant sigh. "How I wish I hadn't! No, I suppose it wouldn't do to marry him in that way, no matter how badly I treated him afterward to make up for it. Well, my last hope is dead."
"And a good thing too. Now, had you not better sit down and write to Lady Chetwoode or your guardian, naming an early date for going to them? Though what your father could have meant by selecting so young a man as a guardian is more than I can imagine."
"Because he wished