Portia - Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (top 100 books of all time checklist txt) 📗

upon the favored Boodie, and sullenly, but with fell determination, make a movement toward her. In another moment all might have been over, and the poor Boodie a mangled corse, but that Roger, coming hurriedly to the rescue, declares there are two _other_ "lovely things" in his portmanteau, suitable to the requirements of Pussy and her brother, whereon peace is once more restored.

To Sir Christopher this unexpected return of Roger is an indescribable blessing. His mind at once rises above all things disagreeable; Slyme and his impertinence fade out of remembrance, at least for the present. He sees and thinks of nothing but his handsome lad, who has returned to him safe and sound. There is quite a confusion indeed just at first; every one is talking together, and nobody is dreaming of listening to anybody. All Dulce's heart seems to go out to Roger, as she marks the glad light that brightens his dark eyes as he returns Fabian's greeting.

After a little while every one sobers down, and Roger, who is looking brown and healthy, if a trifle thin, seats himself besides Dulce upon the small ottoman, that, as a rule, is supposed to be only equal to the support of one individual at a time. As neither Dulce nor Roger, however, appear in the very slightest degree uncomfortable upon it, a doubt is at once and forever afterwards thrown upon this supposition. Once only a little hitch occurs that throws a slight damp upon their content. Roger, feeling the Boodie's offering growing warm within his hands, mechanically opens it, even while carrying on his smiling _tete-a-tete_ with Dulce, but soon the smiles vanish! There, on his open palm, lies a very serpent, a noisome reptile, a box of chocolate creams!

A most improper word escapes him. He precipitately drops the box (it is a very pretty box with a lovely young lady on the cover), chocolates and all, behind the ottoman, where they fall softly, being in a high state of decay and damp, and looks gloomily at Dulce. She responds with fervor; she is, indeed, perhaps, a trifle the gloomiest, and for a moment silence is unbroken.

Then they sigh, then they look again, then they try to pretend that nothing has happened to disturb them, and presently so far succeed that conversation once more falls into an easy channel and flows on unbrokenly.

She is smiling up at him in a happy fashion, long unknown to her, and he is looking down at her with such an amount of satisfaction and content in his gaze as cannot be mistaken. One might easily believe he has forgotten the manner of their parting, and is now regarding her as his own particular possession.

When this sort of thing has gone on for five minutes, Gower, feeling he can stand it no longer, draws his breath quickly, and going over to the small ottoman seats himself upon a low chair, quite close to his betrothed; this effort he makes to assert his position, with all the air of a man who is determined to do or die. Her fan is lying on her knee. Taking it up, with a defiant glance at Roger, he opens it, and trifles with it idly, in a sort of proprietary fashion.

Yet even while he does it, his heart is sad within him and filled with a dire foreboding. The thought that he is unwelcome, that his presence at this moment is probably being regarded in the light of an intrusion by these two, so near to him, fills him with bitterness; he is almost afraid to look at Dulce, lest he shall read in her eyes a cold disapprobation of his conduct in thus interrupting her _tete-a-tete_, when to his surprise a little hand is laid upon his arm, and Dulce's voice asks him a question that instantly draws him into the conversation.

She is smiling very kindly at him; more kindly indeed than she has done for many days; she is in such a happy mood, in such wonderfully gay, bright spirits, that all the world seems good to her, and it becomes necessary to her to impart her joyousness to all around. _Every one_ must be happy to-night, she tells herself; and so, as I have said before, she smiles on Gower, and pats him gently on the arm, and raises him at once to the seventh heaven out of the very lowest depths of despair.

The change is so sudden that Stephen naturally loses his head a little. He draws his chair even nearer to the ottoman. He determines to outsit Roger. In five minutes--in half an hour, at all events--the fellow will be obliged to go and speak to somebody else, if only for decency's sake. And then there is every chance that the dressing-bell will soon ring. Dulce's extreme delight, so innocently expressed at her cousin's return had certainly given him a severe shock, but _now_ there is no reason why he should not remain victor, and keep the prize he had been at such pains to win.

All is going well. Even with Roger freshly returned by her side, she has shown kindness to him, she has smiled upon him with a greater warmth than usual. I daresay she is determined to show her cousin her preference for _him_ (Stephen). This thought makes him positively glow with hope and pride. By guarding against any insidious advances on the part of the enemy, by being ever at Dulce's side to interpose between her and any softly worded sentimental converse, he may conquer and drive the foe from off the field.

Not once this evening until the friendly bedroom candlesticks are produced will he quit her side--never until--

In one moment his designs are frustrated. All his plans are laid low. The voice of Julia breaks upon his ear like a death-knell. She, being fully convinced in her own mind that "poor dear Stephen" is feeling himself in the cold, and is, therefore, inconceivably wretched, determines, with most mistaken kindness, to come to the rescue.

"Stephen, _may_ I ask you to do something for me?" she says, in her sweetest tones and with her most engaging smile.

"You may," says Mr. Gower, as in duty bound, and in an awful tone.

"Then do come and help me to wind this wool," says Julia, still in her most fetching manner, holding out for his inspection about as much scarlet wool as it would take an hour to wind, doing it at one's utmost speed.

With a murderous expression Stephen crosses the room to where she is sitting--at the very antipodes from where he would be, that is, from Dulce--and drops sullenly into a chair at her side.

"Poor dear fellow, already he is feeling injured and out of spirits," says Julia to herself, regarding him with furtive compassion.

"Beast! she is in a plot against me!" says Mr. Gower to his own soul, feeling he could willingly strangle her with her red wool.

So do we misunderstand the feelings and motives of our best friends in this world.

Dulce and Roger thus left to their own resources, continue to be openly and unrestrainedly happy. Every now and then a laugh from one or other of them comes to the stricken Stephen, sitting on his stool of repentance, winding the endless wool. By and by it becomes worse when no laugh is heard, and when the two upon the ottoman seem to be conversing in a tone that would be a whisper if it dared. To Gower it is already a whisper, and frenzy ensues.

Wild thoughts arise within his breast; something it seems to him must be done, and that _soon_. Shall he throw this vile wool, this scarlet abomination, in Julia's placid face, and with a naughty word defy her to hold him prisoner any longer? Or shall he fling himself bodily upon Roger and exterminate him? Or shall he publicly upbraid Dulce with her perfidy? No; this last is too mild a course, and something tells him would not create the havoc that alone can restore peace to his bosom. Shall he--

Oh, blessed sound, the dressing bell. Now she must tear herself away from this new-found cousin and go up-stairs--doubtless to array herself in her choicest garments for his delectation later on. He grinds his teeth again, as this thought comes to torment him.

Regardless of Julia's cry of horror and remonstrance, he drops the wool and rises to his feet, leaving it a hopeless mass on the carpet. He makes a step in Dulce's direction, but she, too, has got up, and before he can reach her has disappeared through the doorway, and is half-way up the old oak staircase.

He takes her in to dinner, certainly, later on, but finds, on seating himself, that Roger, by some unaccountable chance, has secured the seat on her other side. He finds out, too, presently, that she is devoting all her conversation to her cousin, and seems curiously inquisitive about his travels. She appears indeed positively athirst for information on this subject; and the soup is as naught, and the fish as sawdust, in the eyes of Mr. Gower.

"You were in Egypt, too? Tell me all about it. I have always so _longed_ to hear about Egypt," says Dulce, with soft animation.

"Egypt?" says Roger, with some natural hesitation as to how to begin; Egypt is a big place, and just now seems a long way off. "Well, there is a good deal of it, you know; what do you want to know most?"

"Whether you enjoyed yourself--whether you were happy there?" replies she, promptly. I daresay it isn't quite the answer he had expected, because he looks at her for half a minute or so very intently.

"Happy? That includes such a great deal," he says, at length. "It is a very interesting country beyond doubt, and there are Pyramids, you know; you heard of 'em once or twice, I shouldn't wonder; and there are beggars and robbers, and more sand than I ever saw in my life, and--_No_," with a sudden, almost startling change of tone, "I was _not_ happy there, or anywhere else, since last I saw you!"

"Robbers!" says Dulce, hastily, with a rather forced little laugh; "regular brigands, do you mean, going about in hordes, with tunics, and crimson sashes, and daggers. How _could_ one be happy with such terrible people turning up at every odd corner? I daresay," trifling nervously with a wine glass, "it would make one often wish to be at home again."

"I often wished to be at home again." Somehow his manner gives her to understand that the gentlemen in crimson sashes had nothing whatever to do with this wish.

"I fancied brigands belonged exclusively to Greece and Italy," says Dulce, still intent upon the wine-glass. "Are they very picturesque, and do they really go about dressed in all the colors of the rainbow?"

Plainly Miss Blount has been carefully studying the highly-colored prints in the old school-books, in which the lawless Greeks are depicted as the gayest of the gay.

"They are about the most ill-looking ruffians it has ever been my fate to see," says Mr. Dare, indifferently.

"How disappointing! I don't believe you liked being in Egypt after all," says Dulce, who cannot resist returning to tread once more the dangerous ground.

"I think one place is about as good as another," says Mr. Dare, discontentedly, "and about as bad. One shouldn't expect too much, you know."

"Perhaps it would be as well if one didn't expect anything," says Dulce.

"_Better_, no doubt."

"You take a very discontented view of things; your traveling