"So pretty! So awfully pretty!" Thereupon she curtsied. "I have seen all the handsome women in England going for the last ten years, and there has not been one who has made me think that it would be worth my while to get off my perch for her."

"And now you would desert your perch for me!"

"I have already."

"But you can get up again. Let it be all a dream. I know men like to have had such dreams. And in order that the dream may be pleasant the last word between us shall be kind. Such admiration from such a one as you is an honour,--and I will reckon it among my honours. But it can be no more than a dream." Then she gave him her hand. "It shall be so;--shall it not?" Then she paused. "It must be so, Mr.

Longstaff."

"Must it?"

"That and no more. Now I wish to go down. Will you come with me? It will be better. Don't you think it is going to rain?"

Dolly looked up at the clouds. "I wish it would with all my heart."

"I know you are not so ill-natured. It would spoil all."

"You have spoiled all."

"No, no. I have spoiled nothing. It will only be a little dream about 'that strange American girl, who really did make me feel queer for half an hour.' Look at that. A great big drop--and the cloud has come over us as black as Erebus. Do hurry down." He was leading the way.

"What shall we do for carriages to get us to the inn?"

"There's the summer-house."

"It will hold about half of us. And think what it will be to be in there waiting till the rain shall be over! Everybody has been so good-humoured and now they will be so cross!"

The rain was falling in big heavy drops, slow and far between, but almost black with their size. And the heaviness of the cloud which had gathered over them made everything black.

"Will you have my arm?" said Silverbridge, who saw Miss Bonca.s.sen scudding along, with Dolly Longstaff following as fast as he could.

"Oh dear no. I have got to mind my dress. There;--I have gone right into a puddle. Oh dear!" So she ran on, and Silverbridge followed close behind her, leaving Dolly Longstaff in the distance.

It was not only Miss Bonca.s.sen who got her feet into a puddle and splashed her stockings. Many did so who were not obliged by their position to maintain good-humour under their misfortunes. The storm had come on with such unexpected quickness that there had been a general stampede to the summer-house. As Isabel had said, there was comfortable room for not more than half of them. In a few minutes people were crushed who never ought to be crushed. A Countess for whom treble-piled sofas were hardly good enough was seated on the corner of a table till some younger and less gorgeous lady could be made to give way. And the Marchioness was declaring she was as wet through as though she had been dragged in a river. Mrs. Bonca.s.sen was so absolutely quelled as to have retired into the kitchen attached to the summer-house. Mr. Bonca.s.sen, with all his country's pluck and pride, was proving to a knot of gentlemen round him on the verandah, that such treachery in the weather was a thing unknown in his happier country. Miss Bonca.s.sen had to do her best to console the splashed ladies. "Oh Mrs. Jones, is it not a pity! What can I do for you?"

"We must bear it, my dear. It often does rain, but why on this special day should it come down out of buckets?"

"I never was so wet in all my life," said Dolly Longstaff, poking in his head.

"There's somebody smoking," said the Countess angrily. There was a crowd of men smoking out on the verandah. "I never knew anything so nasty," the Countess continued, leaving it in doubt whether she spoke of the rain, or the smoke, or the party generally.

Damp gauzes, splashed stockings, trampled muslins, and features which have perhaps known something of rouge and certainly encountered something of rain may be made, but can only, by supreme high breeding, be made compatible with good-humour. To be moist, muddy, rumpled and smeared, when by the very nature of your position it is your duty to be clear-starched up to the pellucidity of crystal, to be spotless as the lily, to be crisp as the ivy-leaf, and as clear in complexion as a rose,--is it not, O gentle readers, felt to be a disgrace? It came to pa.s.s, therefore, that many were now very cross.

Carriages were ordered under the idea that some improvement might be made at the inn which was nearly a mile distant. Very few, however, had their own carriages, and there was jockeying for the vehicles. In the midst of all this Silverbridge remained as near to Miss Bonca.s.sen as circ.u.mstances would admit. "You are not waiting for me," she said.

"Yes, I am. We might as well go up to town together."

"Leave me with father and mother. Like the captain of a ship, I must be the last to leave the wreck."

"But I'll be the gallant sailor of the day who always at the risk of his life sticks to the skipper to the last moment."

"Not at all;--just because there will be no gallantry. But come and see us to-morrow and find out whether we have got through it alive."

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

The Langham Hotel

"What an abominable climate," Mrs. Bonca.s.sen had said when they were quite alone at Maidenhead.

"My dear, you didn't think you were to bring New York along with you when you came here," replied her husband.

"I wish I was going back to-morrow."

"That's a foolish thing to say. People here are very kind, and you are seeing a great deal more of the world than you would ever see at home. I am having a very good time. What do you say, Bell?"

"I wish I could have kept my stockings clean."

"But what about the young men?"

"Young men are pretty much the same everywhere, I guess. They never have their wits about them. They never mean what they say, because they don't understand the use of words. They are generally half impudent and half timid. When in love they do not at all understand what has befallen them. What they want they try to compa.s.s as a cow does when it stands stretching out its head towards a stack of hay which it cannot reach. Indeed there is no such thing as a young man, for a man is not really a man till he is middle-aged. But take them at their worst they are a deal too good for us, for they become men some day, whereas we must only be women to the end."

"My word, Bella!" exclaimed the mother.

"You have managed to be tolerably heavy upon G.o.d's creatures, taking them in a lump," said the father. "Boys, girls, and cows! Something has gone wrong with you besides the rain."

"Nothing on earth, sir,--except the boredom."

"Some young man has been talking to you, Bella."

"One or two, mother; and I got to be thinking if any one of them should ask me to marry him, and if moved by some evil destiny I were to take him, whether I should murder him, or myself, or run away with one of the others."

"Couldn't you bear with him till, according to your own theory, he would grow out of his folly?" said the father.

"Being a woman,--no. The present moment is always everything to me.

When that horrid old harridan halloaed out that somebody was smoking, I thought I should have died. It was very bad just then."

"Awful!" said Mrs. Bonca.s.sen, shaking her head.

"I didn't seem to feel it much," said the father. "One doesn't look to have everything just what one wants always. If I did I should go nowhere;--but my total life would be less enjoyable. If ever you do get married, Bell, you should remember that."

"I mean to get married some day, so that I shouldn't be made love to any longer."

"I hope it will have that effect," said the father.

"Mr. Bonca.s.sen!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the mother.

"What I say is true. I hope it will have that effect. It had with you, my dear."