we are only at the first entrée; we shall have to sit beside each other for a good hour more. Lady Roupell does not want to talk to me; and your neighbour – I do not know who he is, and I will not ask you, because I know you would not answer me civilly – but whoever he is, he will not talk to you. I saw you try to make him, and he would not; he snubbed you. I was avenged! I was very glad!'
Peggy would much rather not have laughed; but there is something that seems to her so ludicrous in the fact of her abortive advances to Mr. Evans having been overheard and triumphed at, that she cannot help yielding to a brief and stifled mirth at her own expense. And, after all, what he says is sense. He is a very bad man, and she dislikes him extremely; but to let him observe to her that the news from Afghanistan seems warlike; or to remark in return that she has never seen the root-crops look better, need not in the least detract from the thoroughness of her ill opinion of him, and may make the ensuing hour a shade less tedious to herself than would entire silence. So she turns her candid eyes, severely, serenely blue, for the first time, full upon him, and says:
'I think you are right; I think we had better talk.'
But of course, at that sudden permission to talk, every possible topic of conversation flies out of his head. And yet as she remains, with her two blue eyes sternly fixed upon him, awaiting the question or questions that she has given him permission to put, he must say something; so he asks stupidly:
'Who is your neighbour?'
'Our vicar.'
'What is his name?' (How infinitely little he cares what the vicar's name is; but it gives him time.)
'E V A N S,' replies she, spelling very distinctly and slowly, afraid that she may be overheard if she pronounce the whole name.
'Oh, thanks; and the lady opposite in mourning is Mrs. E V A N S?' (spelling too).
'She is Mrs. Evans; but she is not in mourning; she is in her wedding-gown!' replies Peggy, breaking into a smile.
She never can help smiling at the thought of Mrs. Evans's wedding-dress, any more than Charles Lamb's Cheshire cats can help laughing when they think of Cheshire being a County Palatine. She is smiling broadly now. Well, if her smile come seldom, there is no doubt that it is a very agreeable one when it does come. What sort of thing could he say that would be likely to bring it back?
'I did not know that people were ever married in black.'
She shakes her head oracularly.
'No more they are!'
She is smiling still. (What a delightful wide mouth! and what dents de jeune chien!)
'It is made out of an old Geneva gown of his?' suggests Talbot wildly.
Again she shakes her nut-brown head.
'Wrong.'
'I have it!' he cries eagerly. 'I know more about the subject than you think; it has been dyed.'
The mirth has retired from her mouth, and now lurks in the tail of her bright eye.
'You did not find that out for yourself,' she says distrustfully; 'some one told you.'
'Upon my honour, it is my own unassisted discovery,' replies he solemnly, and then they both laugh.
Finding herself betrayed into such a harmony of light-hearted merriment with him, Margaret pulls herself up. After all, she must not forget that there is a medium between the stiff politeness she had planned and this hail-fellow-well-met-ness into which she finds herself somehow sliding. Nor does his next sentence, though innocently enough meant, at all conduce to make her again relax her austerity.
'I should not allow my wife to dye her wedding-gown black.'
His wife! How dare he allude to such a person? He, with his illegal Betty ogling and double-entendre-ing and posturing opposite! How dare he allude to marriage at all? He to whom that sacred tie is a derision! She has frozen up again.
Without having the faintest suspicion of the cause, he is wonderingly aware of the result. Is it possible that she can object to his introducing his hypothetical wife into the consideration? She is more than welcome to retort upon him with her supposititious husband. He will give her the chance.
'Would you?'
'Would I what?'
'Dye your wedding-gown black?'
She knows that she would not. She knows that she would lay it up in lavender, and tenderly show the yellowed skirt and outlandish sleeves to her grandchildren forty years hence. But in the pleasure of contradicting him, truth is worsted.
'Yes.'
'You would?' in a tone of surprise.
She must repeat her fib.
'Yes.'
'Well, I should not have thought it.'
He would like her to ask him why he would not have thought it; but she does not oblige him.
'I think it would show a want of sentiment,' pursues he perseveringly.
'Yes?'
Good heavens! If she has not got back again to her monosyllable!
'Do not you?'
'No.'
'I should think it would bring ill-luck, should not you?'
'No.'
'Should not you, really?'
'I do not think that it is worth arguing about,' replies Peggy, roused and wearied. 'I may dye mine, and you need not dye yours, and we shall neither of us be any the worse.'
'And yet – ' he begins; but she interrupts him.
'After all,' she says, turning once more upon him those two dreadfully direct blue eyes – 'after all, I am not at all sure that it is not a good emblem of marriage – the white gown that goes through muddy waters, and comes out black on the other side.'
There is such a weight of meaning and emphasis in her words that he is silent, and wishes that she had kept to her monosyllables.
CHAPTER IV
'Yon meaner beauties of the night,
That poorly satisfy our eyes,
More by your number than your light;
You common people of the skies,
What are you when the moon shall rise?'
'Oh, Peggy! I have had such a dinner!' cries Prue, in an ecstatic voice, drawing her sister away into a window as soon as the ladies have reached the drawing-room.
'Have you indeed?' replies Margaret distrustfully, and wilfully misunderstanding. 'Had you two helps of venison, like Mr. Evans?'
'Oh! I am not talking of the food!' rejoins the other impatiently. 'I do not know whether or not I ate anything; I do not think I did. But they were so amusing, I did not want to talk. He saw that I did not want to talk, so he let me sit and listen.'
'That was very considerate of him.'
'She
