And then she went on to relate a little scene that, in one form or another, must have been of daily occurrence in the Culvers household. She had come down late that morning, and on seating herself at the breakfast-table, had seen in Lady Culvers’s hand a letter in the writing of a girl friend—one of those “greatest friends of Ida’s” whose intimacy the stepmother would have fain put an end to. Before, however, Juliet had time to claim her property, Lady Culvers, with a sweet and very humble apology, had handed the letter to her, saying that she had mistaken it for one of her own.
“It’s a mistake that has occurred before, Peggy, and that I beg will not happen again, or the consequences will be serious,” Juliet had replied, in lofty, stately fashion.
Upon this Lord Culvers very mildly had expressed a wish that Juliet would cease to address her stepmother by the obnoxious nickname.
“Doesn’t she like it?” Juliet had said, half closing her eyes, and surveying Lady Culvers. “Then I’ll address her as Margaret, it’ll do just as well—it’ll suggest the other name to her mind.”
A threat which the young lady had not hesitated to put into execution.
“I think, after all,” she continued to Arthur Glynde as she finished her narration, “pussy would be a far more appropriate nickname—she is so emphatically of the cat tribe. Don’t you know ‘The velvet paw, and the hidden claw’? Oh, how stifling it is this morning—please give me that fan.”
Arthur did not give her the fan; he preferred to retain it, and save her the trouble of using it.
Juliet smiled up at him as he bent over the capacious and very easy chair in which she reclined.
“Thank you, that is delightful. Now if I had asked Clive to hand me a fan, he’d have done it nothing more. It would never have occurred to him to save me the trouble of using it.”
This was dangerous ground to take with a man who would have given ten years off his life to stand in Clive’s shoes. But dangerous ground had always a strong attraction for Juliet.
Arthur’s face changed, his arm fell to his side.
“That man has more luck than he deserves,” he said, in a low tone.
“I don’t think he appreciates his luck either, and sometimes I think I’ll take it away from him,” she said, drooping her full white lids till the shadow of her long lashes fell upon her cheek.
“And bestow it upon another man!” cried Arthur. And then before she could realise what was coming, he was down on his knees beside her with a passionate declaration of love on his lips.
Possibly, however, if she had known what was coming, she would have made no effort to prevent it. She took his protestations and despairing entreaties very calmly.
“Please get up off your knees,” she said; “the words were no sooner out of my mouth than I regretted them. After all, I prefer being engaged to Clive!”
Arthur rose from his knees ruefully. He folded his arms, and stood a little distance off looking down on her; his fair, boyish features telling only too plainly his tale of love and disappointment.
Juliet smiled up at him again.
“Oh, don’t look so rueful—there’s a bright side to everything,” she said, cheeringly.
“A bright side to this!” he exclaimed.
“Yes. Don’t you see so long as I’m engaged to Clive I want to marry someone else? But the chances are, if I broke off my engagement with him, that I should immediately fall in love with him all over again. Oh, no! Pray—pray don’t go down on the carpet again.”
In order the more effectually to prevent such a catastrophe, she left her chair, and walked away to the window. It opened over a miniature rockery planted with ferns and sweet-scented flowers. She plucked a spray of heliotrope, and began toying with it.
“Clive has never said to me one-quarter of the sweet things that you said just now,” she said, softly, meditatively.
Arthur abruptly turned his back on her, and, as if afraid to venture once more within range of her coquetries, looked for his hat and made for the door.
“There’s not a man living who could stand it,” he muttered, almost fiercely.
“You’ve left your ‘Wild Western Light’ under the table,” she said, not moving from her place at the window.
He stooped to gather the loose sheets of manuscript which, in his ardour, he had let fall.
“Arthur,” she said, in a low, persuasive tone, “are you in a great hurry to go? I wanted to ask you to do something for me.”
Down went the loose sheets of manuscript to the floor once more, and back to her side he went in a moment.
“Do something for you!” he exclaimed. “What is there I would not do? You know I would lay down my life for you any hour, any day!”
“Oh, it’s nothing half so bad as that,” she answered, smilingly; “I wouldn’t trouble you at all if I had a brother, or a cousin, or anyone of whom I could ask a favour.”
She seemed utterly to ignore the fact that she had a betrothed lover.
Arthur reminded her of it.
“You forget,” he said, bitterly, “the man who doesn’t appreciate his good luck, and who doesn’t know how to say sweet things to you.”
“Clive, do you mean? Oh, it’s something I couldn’t possibly ask him to do.”
Arthur’s face flushed with a real happiness. For the moment he felt himself exalted on a pinnacle to which his rival had never attained.
Only for a moment, however. Juliet knew how to read the light of pride in his eyes, and forthwith set herself to quench it.
“I ought to apologise for troubling you in this way,” she said, sweetly; “but since Stacy—she was my maid forever so many years, you know—married, there is no one I
