"He was at school with me."
"Oh!" groans Molly.
"Does that groan proceed from a conviction that I am in the last stage of decay?" demands Mr. Massereene. "Anything so rude as you, Molly, has not as yet been rivaled. However, I am at a disadvantage: so I forgive, and will proceed. Though at school with me, he is at least nine years my junior, and can't be more than twenty-seven."
"Ah!" says Molly. To an Irish girl alone is given the power to express these two exclamations with proper effect.
"He is a hussar, of a good family, sufficiently good looks, and, I think, no fortune," says Mr. Massereene, as though reading from a doubtful guide-book.
"How delightful!" says Molly.
"How terrific!" sighs Letitia. "Fancy a hussar finding amusement in lambs, and cows, and fat pigs, and green fields!"
"'Green fields and pastures new,'" quotes Mr. Massereene. "He will have them in abundance. He ought to be happy, as they say there is a charm in variety."
"Perhaps he will find some amusement in me," suggests Molly, modestly. "Can it be possible that he is really coming? Oh, the glory of having a young man to talk to, and that young man a soldier! Letitia," to her sister-in-law, "I warn you it will be no use for you to look shocked, because I have finally made up my mind to flirt every day, and all day long, with Tedcastle George Luttrell."
"Shocked!" says Letitia, gravely. "I would be a great deal more shocked if you had said you wouldn't; for what I should do with him, if you refused to take him in hand, is a thing on which I shudder to speculate. John is forever doing questionable things, and repenting when it is too late. Unless he means to build a new wing—" with a mild attempt at sarcasm—"I don't know where Mr. Luttrell is to sleep."
"I fear I would not have time," says Massereene, meekly; "the walls would scarcely be dry, as he is coming—the day after to-morrow."
"Not until then?" says Letitia, ominously calm. "Why did you not make it to-day? That would have utterly precluded the possibility of my getting things into any sort of order."
"Letitia, if you continue to address me in your present heartless style for one minute longer, I shall burst into tears," says Mr. Massereene. And then they all laugh.
"He shall have my room," says Molly, presently, seeing that perplexity still adorns Letitia's brows, "and I can have Lovat's."
"Oh, Molly, I will not have you turned out of your room for any one," says Letitia; but she says it faintly, and is conscious of a feeling of relief at her heart as she speaks.
"But indeed he shall. It is such a pretty room that he cannot fail to be impressed. Any one coming from a hot city, and proving insensible to the charms of the roses that are now creeping into my window, would be unfit to live. Even a hussar must have a soft spot somewhere. I foresee those roses will be the means of reducing him to a lamb-like meekness."
"You are too good, Molly. It seems a shame," says Letitia, patting her sister-in-law's hand, and still hesitating, through a sense of duty; "does it not, John?"
"It is so difficult to know what a woman really means by the word, 'shame,'" replies John, absently, being deep in the morning's paper. "You said it was a shame yesterday when the cat drank all the cream; and Molly said it was a shame when Wyndham ran away with Crofton's wife."
"Don't take any notice of him, Letty," says Molly, with a scornful shrug of her pretty shoulders, turning her back on her brother, and resuming the all-important subject of the expected visitor.
"Another railway accident, and twenty men killed," says Mr. Massereene, in a few minutes, looking up from his Times, and adopting the lugubrious tone one always assumes on such occasions, whether one cares or not.
"Wasn't it fortunate we put up those curtains clean last week?" murmurs Letitia, in a slow, self-congratulatory voice.
"More than fortunate," says Molly.
"Twenty men killed, Letty!" repeats Mr. Massereene, solemnly.
"I don't believe there is a spare bath in the house," exclaims Letitia, again sinking into the lowest depth of despair.
"You forget the old one in the nursery. It will do for the children very well, and he can have the new one," says Molly.
"Twenty men killed, Molly!" reiterates Mr. Massereene, a faint gleam of surprised disgust creeping into his eyes.
"So it will, dear. Molly, you are an immense comfort. What did you say, John? Twenty men killed? Dreadful! I wonder, Molly, if I might suggest to him that I would not like him to smoke in bed? I hear a great many young men have that habit; indeed, a brother of mine, years ago, at home, nearly set the house on fire one night with a cigar."
"Let me do all the lecturing," says Molly, gayly; "there is nothing I should like better."
"Talk of ministering angels, indeed!" mutters Mr. Massereene, rising, and making for the door, paper and all. "I don't believe they would care if England was swamped, so long as they had clean curtains for Luttrell's bed."
CHAPTER II.
"A lovely lady, garmented in light
From her own beauty."
—Shelley.
The day that is to bring them Luttrell has dawned, deepened, burst into perfect beauty, and now holds out its arms to the restful evening. A glorious sunny evening as yet, full of its lingering youth, with scarce a hint of the noon's decay. The little yellow sunbeams, richer perhaps in tint than they were two hours agone, still play their games of hide-and-seek and bo-peep among the roses that climb and spread themselves in all their creamy, rosy, snowy loveliness over the long, low house where live the Massereenes, and breathe forth scented kisses to the wooing wind.
A straggling house is Brooklyn, larger, at the first glance, than it in reality is, and distinctly comfortable, yet with its comfort, a thing very far apart from luxury, and with none of the sleepiness of an over-rich prosperity about it. In spite of the late June sun, there is a general air of life, a tremulous merriment, everywhere: the voices of the children, a certain laugh that rings like far-off music, the cooing of the pigeons beneath the eaves, the cluck-cluck of the silly fowls in the farm-yard—all mingle to defy the creeping sense of laziness that the day generates.
"It is late," says Mr. Massereene to himself, examining his watch for the fifteenth time as he saunters in a purposeless fashion up and down before the hall door. There is a suppressed sense of expectancy both in his manner and in the surroundings. The gravel has been newly raked, and gleams white and untrodden. The borders of the lawn that join on to it have been freshly clipped. A post in the railings, that for three weeks previously has been tottering to its fall, has been securely propped, and now stands firm and uncompromising as its fellows.
"It is almost seven," says Letitia, showing her fresh, handsome face at the drawing-room window. "Do you think he will be here for dinner, John?"
"I am incapable of thought," says John. "I find that when a man who is in the habit of dining at six is left without his dinner until seven he grows morose. It is a humiliating discovery. Surely the stomach should be subservient to the mind; but it isn't. Letitia, like a good girl, do say you have ordered up the soup."
"But, my dear John, had we not better wait a little longer?"
"My dear Letitia, most certainly not, unless you wish to raise a storm impossible to quell. At present I feel myself in a mood that a very little more waiting will render ferocious. Besides,"—seeing his wife slightly uneasy—"as he did not turn up about six, he cannot by any possibility be here until half-past eight."
"And I took such trouble with