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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 1885)
246 THE WEST SHORE. old friemL And I think you are both like and unlike. Your sister ha very beautiful eyes" she lowered her'a swiftly "and hair like yours, but her rannner Bnd style uie vry diuurouL 1 cau no iure Lucy Cab iu your place than I can picture you, Miss Guest, as I saw her for the first time and on many after occasions," I added, laughing an much to cover my own hardihood as at the queer little figure I had conjured up. " Thank you," Mr. Herapath," she replied, with cold ness, though she bad blushed darkly to her ears. " That I think must be enough of compliments for to-night as you are not an old friend" Iater I stood in the drawing room. I felt alone. Mr. Quest had passed on to others and I stood aside, the sense that I was not one of these people troubling me in a manner an now as it was alwurd; for I had been in the habit of rather despising " society." Miss Guest was at the piano, the centre of a circle of soft light, which showed up also a keen-faced, dark-whiskered roan lean ing over her with the air of one used to the position. Every one else was so fully engaged that I may have looked, as well as felt, forlorn, and meeting her eyes could have fancied she was regarding me with amuse ment almost triumph. It must have been mere fancy, bred of self-consciousness, for the next moment she beckoned me to her, and said to her cavalier: " There, Jack, Mr. Herapath is going to talk to me !xut Norway now, so that I don't want you any longer. Perhas you won't mind stepping up to the school-room Frauloin and Clare are there-and telling Clare that that -oh, anything." She did not seak; and I, content to watch the slen der hands stealing over the keys would not, until my eyes fell upon her right wrist She had put off her bracelets and so disclosed a scar upon it, something about which not iU newness so startled me that I said abruptly, " That U very strange! Pray tell me how you did it? " Bhe Uiked np, saw what I meant, and stopping has tily, put on her bracelet; to all apoaranoe so vexed by my thoughtless qnestion, and anxious to hide the mark, that I was quick to add humbly, u I asked because your sister hurt her wrist in nearly the same place on the day when she thought I was in trouble, and the ooinoidenoe truck me." " Yes, I remember," looking at me I thought with a certain suspicion, as though she were not sure that I was giving the right motive. " I did this much in the same way. By falling, I mean. Isn't it a hateful disfigure ment?" No, it was no disfigurement Even to her, with a woman's love of conquest it muitt have seemed anything but disfigurement had she known what the quiet k ward man at her side was thinking, who stood lxking shyly at it and found no words to contradict her, though he asked him twice, and thought him stupid enough. . After an interval, "Are you going to the Goldmaces' dance?" " No," I answered her humbly. " I g, out so little." M ludsed," with an odd uuik not too kindly; " I wUh no I don't that we could say the same. We are en gaged, I think" she paused, her attention divided be tween myself and Boccherini's minuet, the low strains of which she wns sending through the room "for every afternoon this week except Saturday. By the way, Mr. Herapath, do you remember what was the name Bab told me you teased her with?" " Wee, bonnie Bab," I answered absently. My thoughts had gone forward to Saturday. "Oh, yes, wee, bonnie Bab," she murmured softly. "Poor Bab!" and suddenly out short Boccherini's music and our chat by striking a terrific discord and laughing merrily at my start of discomfiture. Every one took it as a signal to leave. I went away with something before me that call upon Saturday afternoon. Quite unreasonably I funciod I should see her alone. And so when the day came and I stood outside the opening door of the drawing-room, and hoard voices and laughter within, I was hurt and aggrieved beyond measure. There was quite a party, and a merry one, assembled, who were playing at some game as it seemed to me, for I caught sight of Clare whipping off an impromptu bandage from her eyes, and striving by her stiffest air to give the lie to a pair of flushed cheeks. The black-whiskered man was there, and two men of his kind, and a German governess, and a very old lady in a wheel-chair, who was called " grand mamma," and Miss Guest herself looking, in the prettiest dress of silvery plush, to the full as bright and fair and graceful as I had been picturing her each hour since we parted. She dropped me a stately courtesy. " Will you play the part of Miss 'Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs, Mr. Herapath, while I act honest Burchell, and say 'Fudge!" or will you burn nuts and play games with neighbor Flamborough? You will join us, won't you? Clare does not so misbehave every day, only it is such a wet afternoon and so cold and wretched, and we did not think there would be any more callers and tea will be up in five minutes." She did not think there would be any more callers! Something in her smile belied the words and taught me that she had thought she had known that there would be one more caller. It was a simple game enough. One sat in the middle blindfolded, while the rest disguised their own or as sumed each other's voices, and spoke one by one some gibe or quip at his expense. When he succeeded in naming the sjker, the detected satirist put on the poke, aud in his turn heard things good for his soul's health. Now this rale unhappily soon fell to me, and proved a heavy one, because I was not so familiar with the other'g voices as were the rest; and Miss Guest-whose faintest tones I thought to have known-had a wondrous knack of cheating me, now tuking off Clare's voice, and now sftor the door had been opened to admit the tea her father's. So I failed again and again to earn my release. But when a voice behind me cried with well-feigned Mgcrnen, "How nice! Do toll mo all about a fire!"
