The Ladies Lindores

of the chasse-aux-maris disgusted her, she came at length, against her will, to recognise that there was something in what he said. “I have been imprudent, as usual,” she said to herself. Alas that all the natural proceedings of life should be hampered by these rules of prudence!⁠—these perpetual previsions of what might happen, to which she felt it was impossible she could ever bow her spirit. But the idea that it would be said that a boy like Millefleurs had “amused himself” with her daughter⁠—that he had loved and ridden away⁠—that Edith, her high-spirited, pure-minded girl, had been left planté là⁠—broke over Lady Lindores like a wave of passionate feeling: the suggestion was intolerable and odious. This happened when Millefleurs was in the room with her, in full tide of talk, and entirely at his ease. The sudden sensation disclosed itself in a flush of colour mounting in a moment to her very hair. Intolerable! The thought was so odious that she started to her feet and walked to the open window, as if the change of position would throw it off⁠—and also, suffocated as she felt by that sudden fiery breath, to get fresh air, lest she should, as she said, make an exhibition of herself.

“You are ill, Lady Lindores,” cried Millefleurs. Those little beady eyes of his saw everything. He ran forward to support her (he was just up to her shoulder), putting forward a reclining-chair with one hand, picking up a bottle of eau de cologne with the other. He had all his wits about him. “I am used to it. Sometimes my mother se trouve mal in the same way. It will pass over,” he said encouragingly to Edith, who, unused to anything of the kind, started up in alarm. “Dear Lady Lindores, put yourself here.”

“I am not ill,” she said, almost angrily. “Pray do not make any⁠—fuss. How rude I am! but there is nothing the matter with me, I assure you. The room is warm, that is all.”

Millefleurs looked at her curiously. He put down the eau de cologne, and took his hand from the chair. For a moment he seemed about to speak, but then stood aside more serious than his wont. In terror lest he should have divined her thoughts, Lady Lindores returned to her seat, calming herself down with an effort, and made the best attempt she could to resume their easy conversation of the moment before. She was vexed beyond measure when Edith, a short time after, left the room to go and look for something which Millefleurs was anxious to see. He took instant advantage of the opportunity thus afforded him. “Lady Lindores,” he said, with that serious air as of a candid child, going up to her, “you are not ill, but you are vexed and angry, and it is something about me.”

“About you, Lord Millefleurs! how could that be?⁠—you have never given me the least occasion to be angry.”

“That is why,” he said, gravely. “I see it all. You have nothing to find fault with. I am quite innocent and harmless, yet I am in the way, and you do not know how to tell me so. For my part, I have been so happy here that I have forgotten all sorts of precautions. One does not think of precautions when one is happy. Dear Lady Lindores, you shall tell me exactly what I ought to do, and I will do it. I have all my life been guided by women. I have such faith in a lady’s instinct. I might be confused, perhaps, in my own case, but you will hit upon the right thing. Speak to me freely, I shall understand you at a word,” the droll little hero said. Now Lady Lindores was in a strait as serious as she had ever experienced in her life; but when she glanced up at him, and saw the gravity upon his baby face, his attitude of chubby attention, such a desire to laugh seized her, that it was all she could do by main force to keep her gravity. This insensibly relaxed the tension, and restored her to her usual self-command. Still there was no denying that the situation was a very peculiar one, and his request for guidance the strangest possible. She answered hurriedly, in the confusion of her mingled feelings⁠—

“I don’t know what there is to do, Lord Millefleurs, or how I can advise you. A sudden want of breath⁠—a consciousness all at once that it is a very warm morning⁠—what can that have to do with you?”

“You will not tell me, then?” he said, with an air half disappointed, half imploring.

“There is nothing to tell. Here is Edith. For heaven’s sake, not another word!” said Lady Lindores, in alarm. She did not perceive that she betrayed herself in this very anxiety that her daughter should suspect nothing. He looked at her very curiously once more, studying her face, her expression, even the nervousness of the hand with which she swept her dress out of her way. He was a young man full of experiences, knowing all the ways of women. How far she was sincere⁠—how far this might be a little scheme, a device for his instruction, so that he might see what was expected of him without any self-betrayal on the lady’s part⁠—was what he wanted to know. Had it been so, he would at once have understood his role. It is usual to say that simplicity and sincerity are to the worldly-bred much more difficult to understand than art; but there is something still more difficult than these. “Pure no-meaning puzzles more than wit.” Though Lady Lindores had far more meaning in her than nine-tenths of her contemporaries, she was in this one case absolutely incomprehensible from want of meaning. She had no more notion than a child what to do, or even what she wished to be done. If this little chubby fellow