"I confess I often wondered where your exquisite voice received its cultivation, its finish. Now I know. You were fortunate in securing Marigny. I have known him refuse dozens through want of time; or so he said. More probably he would not trouble himself to teach where there was no certainty of success. Well, and so you dislike the country?"
"No, no. Not so much that. What I dislike is having no one to speak to. When John is away and Letty on the tread-mill—that is, in the nursery—I am rather thrown on my own resources; and they are not much. Your coming was the greatest blessing that ever befell me. When I actually beheld you in your own proper person on the garden path that night, I could have hugged you in the exuberance of my joy."
"Then why on earth didn't you?" says Luttrell, reproachfully, as though he had been done out of something.
"A lingering sense of maiden modesty and a faint idea that perhaps you might not like it alone restrained me. But for that I must have given way to my feelings. Just think, if I had," says Molly, breaking into a merry laugh, "what a horrible fright I would have given you!"
"Not a horrible one, at all events. Molly," bending to examine some imaginary thing in the side of the boat, "have you never—had a—lover?"
"A lover? Oh, yes, I have had any amount of them," says Molly, with an alacrity that makes his heart sink. "I don't believe I could count my adorers: it quite puzzles me to know where to begin. There were the curates—our rector is not sweet-tempered, so we have a fresh one every year—and they never fail me. Three months after they come, as regular as clock-work, they ask me to be their wife. Now, I appeal to you,"—clasping her hands and wrinkling up all her pretty forehead—"do I look like a curate's wife?"
"You do not," replies Luttrell, emphatically, regarding with interest the debonnaire, spirituelle face before him: "no, you most certainly do not."
"Well, I thought not myself; yet each of those deluded young men saw something angelic about me, and would insist on asking me to share his lot. They kept themselves sternly blind to the fact that I detest with equal vigor broth and old women."
"Intolerable presumption!" says Luttrell, parenthetically.
"Was it? I don't think I looked at it in that light. They were all very estimable men, and Mr. Rochfort was positively handsome. You, you may well stare, but some curates, you know, are good-looking, and he was decidedly High Church. In fact, he wasn't half so bad as the generality of them," says Molly, relentingly. "Only—it may be wrong, but the truth is I hate curates. I think nothing of them. They are a mixture of tea and small jokes, and are ever at a stand-still. They are always in the act of budding—they never bloom; and then they are so afraid of the bishop."
"I thank my stars I'm not a curate," says Luttrell, devoutly.
"However,"—regretfully—"they were something: a proposal is always an excitement. But the present man is married; so that makes it impossible for this present year. There was positively nothing to which to look forward. So you may fancy with what rapture I hailed your coming."
"You are very good," says Luttrell, in an uncertain tone, not being quite sure whether he is intensely amused or outrageously angry, or both. "Had you—any other lovers?"
"Yes. There was the last doctor. He poisoned a poor man afterward by mistake, and had to go away."
"After what?"
"After I declined to assist him in the surgery," says Molly, demurely. "It was a dreadful thing—the poisoning, I mean—and caused a great deal of scandal. I don't believe it was anybody's fault, but I certainly did pity the man he killed. And—it might have been me, you know; think of that! He was very much attached to me; and so was the Lefroys' eldest son, and James Warder, and the organist, to say nothing of the baker's boy, who, I am convinced, would cut his throat to oblige me to-morrow morning, if I asked him."
"Well, don't ask him," says Luttrell, imploringly. "He might do it on the door-step, and then think of the horrid mess! Promise me you won't even hint at it until after I am gone."
"I promise," says Molly, laughing.
Onward glides the boat; the oars rise and fall with a tuneful splash. Miss Massereene, throwing her hat with reckless extravagance into the bottom of the punt, bares her white arm to the elbow and essays to catch the grasses as she sweeps by them.
"Look at those lilies," she says, eagerly; "how exquisite, in their broad green frames! Water-sprites! how they elude one!" as she makes a vigorous but unsuccessful grab at some on her right hand.
"Very beautiful," says Luttrell, dreamily, with his eyes on Molly, not on the lilies.
"I want some," says Molly, revengefully; "I always do want what don't want me, and vice versa. Oh! look at those beauties near you. Catch them."
"I don't think I can; they are too far off."
"Not if you stoop very much for them. I think if you were to bend over a good deal you might do it."
"I might; I might do something else, too," says Luttrell, calmly, seeing it would be as easy for him to grasp the lilies in question as last night's moon: "I might fall in."
"Oh, never mind that," responds Molly, with charming though premeditated unconcern, a little wicked desire to tease getting the better of her amiability.
Luttrell, hardly sure whether she jests or is in sober earnest, opens his large eyes to their fullest, the better to judge, but, seeing no signs of merriment in his companion, gives way to his feelings a little.
"Well, you are cool," he says, slowly.
"I am not, indeed," replies innocent Molly. "How I wish I were 'cool,' on such a day as this! Are you?"
"No," shortly. "Perhaps that is the reason you recommended me a plunge; or is it for your amusement?"
"You are afraid," asserts Molly, with a little mischievous, scornful laugh, not to be endured for a moment.
"Afraid!" angrily. "Nonsense! I don't care about wetting my clothes, certainly, and I don't want to put out my cigar; but"—throwing away the choice Havana in question—"you shall have your lilies, of course, if you have set your heart on them."
Here, standing up, he strips off his coat with an air that means business.
"I don't want them now," says Molly, in a degree frightened, "at least not those. See, there are others close behind you. But I will pluck them myself, thank you: I hate giving trouble. No, don't put your hands near them. I won't have them if you do."
"Why?"
"Because you are cross, and I detest cross people."
"Because I didn't throw myself into the water head foremost to please you?" with impatient wrath. "They used to call that chivalry long ago. I call it folly. You should be reasonable."
"Oh, don't lose your temper about it," says Molly.
Now, to have a person implore you at any time "not to lose your temper" is simply abominable; but to be so implored when you have lost it is about the most aggravating thing that can occur to any one. So Luttrell finds it.
"I never lose my temper about trifles," he says, loftily.
"Well, I don't know what you call it, but when one puts on a frown, and drags down the corners of one's mouth, and looks as if one was going to devour some one, and makes one's self generally disagreeable, I know what I call it," says Molly, viciously.
"Would you like to return home?" asks Mr. Luttrell, with prompt solicitude. "You are tired, I think."
"'Tired'? Not in the least, thank you. I should like to stay out here for the next two hours, if——"
"Yes?"
"If