The Hoyden by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (first ebook reader .txt) 📕

falls on Tom Hescott. "Out" comes to him.

"There, Tom! You must be blindfolded," says Tita delightfully. "Who's got a _big_ handkerchief?"

"I wouldn't stand that, Hescott, if I were you," says Colonel Neilson, laughing.

"What is it?" asks Tom, who is a little abstracted.

"Nothing much," says Mrs. Chichester mischievously. "Except that Lady Rylton says your head is so big that she has sent to the housekeeper for a young sheet to tie it up in."

Hescott smiles. He can well afford his smile, his head being wonderfully handsome, not too small, but slender and beautifully formed.

"Give me yours," says Tita, thrusting her hand into her husband's pocket and pulling out his handkerchief.

The little familiar action sends a sharp pang through Mrs. Bethune's heart.

"Now, Tom, come and be decorated," cries Tita. Hescott advances to her, and stops as if waiting. "Ah!" cries she, "do you imagine I could ever get up there!"

She raises both her arms to their fullest height, which hardly brings her pretty hands even to a level with his forehead. She stands so for a moment, laughing at him through the gracefully uplifted arms. It is a coquettish gesture, though certainly innocent, and nobody, perhaps, would have thought anything of it but for the quick, bright light that springs into Hescott's eyes. So she might stand if she were about to fling her arms around his neck.

"Down on your knees," cries Tita, giving herself the airs of a little queen.

Hescott drops silently on to them. He has never once removed his gaze from hers. Such a strange gaze! One or two of the men present grow amused, all the women interested. Margaret Knollys makes an involuntary step forward, and then checks herself.

"There!" says Tita, who has now bound the handkerchief over Hescott's eager eyes. "Now are you sure you can't see? Not a blink?" She turns up his chin, and examines him carefully. "I'm _certain_ you can see out of this one," says she, and pulls the handkerchief a little farther over the offending eye. "Now, get up. 'How many horses in your father's stable?'"

This is an embarrassing question, or ought to be, as Mr. Hescott's father is dead; but he seems quite up to it. Indeed, it now occurs to Sir Maurice that this cannot be the first time he has played blind man's buff with his cousin.

"'Three white and three gray.'"

"An excellent stud!" says Mr. Gower.

But Tita is not thinking of frivolities. Like Elia's old lady, the "rigour of game" is all she cares for. She gives Tom Hescott one or two little turns.

"'Then turn about, and turn about,'" says she, suiting the action to the word, "'And you don't catch _me_ till May-day.'"

With this, she gives him a delicate little shove, and, picking up the train of her gown, springs lightly backwards to the wall behind her.

And now the fun grows fast and furious. Hescott, who, I regret to say, must have disarranged that handkerchief once for all, is making great running with the lady guests. As Mr. Gower remarks, it is perfectly wonderful how well he and Marryatt and the other men can elude him. There is no difficulty at all about it! Whereas Mrs. Chichester is in danger of her life any moment, and Mrs. Bethune has had several narrow escapes. Tita, who is singularly nimble (fairies usually are), has been able to dart to and fro with comparative ease; but Margaret Knollys, who, to everybody's immense surprise, is enjoying herself down to the ground, was very nearly caught once.

"That was a near shave," says Colonel Neilson, who happens to be near her when she runs, flushed and laughing, to the doorway. And then--"How you are enjoying yourself!"

"Yes. Isn't it foolish of me," says she; but she laughs still.

"It is the essence of wisdom," says Neilson.

Here a little giggle from Mrs. Chichester tells of _her_ having been nearly caught. And now, now there is a skirmish down there, and presently they can see Hescott drawing Tita reluctantly forward.

Tita is making frantic signs to Mr. Gower.

"It's not a fair capture unless you can guess the name of your captive," says Gower, in answer to that frantic if silent appeal.

Hescott raises his right hand, pretends to feel blindly in the air for a moment, then his hand falls on Tita's sunny little head. It wanders on her short curls--it is a very slow wandering.

Mrs. Bethune looks up at Rylton, who is standing beside her.

"Do you still doubt?" asks she, in a low whisper.

"Doubt! I am a past master at it," says he bitterly. "I should be! _You_ taught me!"

"I! Oh, Maurice!"

"Yes--you! Yesterday, as it seems to me, I believed in everyone. To-day I doubt every soul I meet."

At this point Hescott's "doubts," at all events, seem to be set at rest. His hand has ceased to wander over the pretty head, and in a low tone he says:

"Titania!"

This word is meant for Tita alone. A second later he calls aloud:

"Lady Rylton!"

But Maurice and Mrs. Bethune, who had been standing just behind him, had heard that whispered first word.

"Oh, you rare right," says Tita petulantly. "But you would never have known me but for my hair. And I _hate_ being blindfolded, too. Maurice, will you take it for me?" holding out to him the handkerchief.

"No!" says Rylton quietly, but decisively--so decisively that Mrs. Chichester suddenly hides her face behind her fan.

"What a No!" says she to Captain Marryatt. "Did you hear it? What's the matter with him?"

"He's jealous, perhaps," says Captain Marryatt.

Mrs. Chichester gives way to wild, if suppressed, mirth.

"Heavens! Fancy being jealous of one's own wife!" says she. "Now, if it had been anyone else's----"

"Yes, there would be reason in that!" says Captain Marryatt, so gloomily that her mirth breaks forth afresh.

He is always a joy to her, this absurd young man, who, in spite of barbs and shafts, follows at her chariot wheels with a determination worthy of a better cause.

Gower, who also had heard that quiet "No," had come instantly forward, and entreated Tita to blindfold him. And once more the fun is at its height. Hescott, as compared with Randal Gower, is not even _in_ it in this game. The latter simulates the swallow, and even outdoes that wily bird in his swift dartings to and fro. Great is his surprise, and greater still his courage--this last is acknowledged by _all_--when, on a final swoop round the room with arms extended, he suddenly closes them round the bony form of Miss Gower, who had returned five minutes ago, and who, silent and solitary, is standing in a distant corner breathing anathemas upon the game.

Everyone stops dead short--everyone looks at the ceiling; surely it _must_ fall! There had been a general, if unvoiced, opinion up to this that Mr. Gower could _see_; but now he is at once exonerated, and may leave the dock at any moment without a stain upon his character.

"Come away! come away!" whisper two or three behind his back.

Mrs. Chichester pulls frantically at his coat-tails; but Mr. Gower holds on. He passes his hand over Miss Gower's gray head.

"It is--it is--it _must_ be!" cries he, in a positive tone. "It"--here his hand flies swiftly down her warlike nose--"it is Colonel Neilson!" declares he, with a shout of triumph.

"Unhand me, sir!" cries Miss Gower.

She had not spoken up to this--but to compare her to a man! She moves majestically forward. Gower unhands her, and, lifting one side of his would-be blind, regards her fixedly.

"It was the nose!" He looks round reproachfully at Neilson. "Just see what you've let me in for!" says he.

"Don't talk to me, sir!" cries his aunt indignantly. "Make no excuses--none need be made! When one plays demoralizing games in daylight, one should be prepared for anything;" and with this she once more leaves the room.

"Ah, we should have played demoralizing games at _midnight,"_ says Mr. Gower, who doesn't look half as much ashamed of himself as he ought, "then we should have been all right."

Here somebody who is standing at one of the windows says suddenly:

"It is clearing!"

"Is it?" cries Tita. "Then I suppose we ought to go out! But what a pity we couldn't have another game first!"

She looks very sorry.

"You certainly seemed to enjoy it," says Sir Maurice with a cold smile, as he passes her.


CHAPTER XVIII.

HOW TITA GETS A SCOLDING, AND HOW SHE REBELS AND ACCUSES SIR MAURICE OF BREACH OF CONTRACT.


"Can I come in?"

Rylton's voice is a little curt as he knocks at his wife's door. It is not the door opening into the corridor outside, but the inner door that leads from her room to his, and to the dressing-room beyond.

"Yes, of course," cries Tita pleasantly.

She is just on the point of dismissing her maid for the night--the maid who has so little to do; no long hair to brush, only the soft little curly locks that cover her mistress's head. She has taken off Tita's evening gown, and, now that the little locks have been carefully seen to, has taken off her dressing-gown also. It occurs to Tita that she might as well take _herself_ off as well, and as soon as possible.

This thought makes her laugh.

"You can go now, Sarah," says she to the maid, who loves her; "and don't bring me my tea before eight to-morrow, because I'm as sleepy as sleepy can be."

She nods kindly to the dismissed maid, and, going to the door where Rylton is presumably standing, lets him in.

"How early you are!" says she, thinking of the glories of the smoking-room below.

"How late you are!" returns he. "I half fancied you would have been asleep by this time!"

"Oh, well, I soon shall be!" says she. "I was just going to say my prayers as you came in; after that it won't take me a minute to get out of my clothes, and," with a little laugh, "into my bed."

Her clothes, as she stands at present, are so becoming that it seems quite a pity that she should ever get out of them. Her neck and arms--soft and fair and round as a little child's--are shining in the lamplight, and beneath them the exquisite lace petticoat she wears gives her the air of one who is just going to a fancy ball. It is short enough to show the perfect little feet and the slender ankles beneath it.

"How inhospitable of you to desert your friends so soon!" says she. "Why, you never come up till two, do you?--at least, so you tell me."

"You will catch cold if you stay like that," says he.

It is a somewhat irrelevant remark; but, for the first time in all his knowledge of her, the tender charm that is her own becomes clear to him. It seems to him that she is a new being--one he has never seen before; and, with this fresh knowledge, his anger towards her grows stronger.

"I!--in this weather! Why, it is hardly chilly even yet, in spite of the rain; and, besides, I have this fire!" She catches his hand, and draws him towards the hearthrug. "I am sure you have something to say