An English Squire. Coleridge Christabel Rose

group round the fire as they waited for the arrival of some friends of Cheriton’s.

      “And what have you been about?” asked Cherry.

      “I have been singing with your cousins. Ah, it is pleasant when there are those who like music!”

      “You found all these fellows awful savages, didn’t you?” said Rupert.

      Alvar turned his great dark eyes on Cheriton with the same sort of expression with which Rolla was wont to watch him.

      “Ah, no,” he said; “my brother is not a savage. But I do like young ladies.”

      “But I thought,” said Rupert, “that in Spain young ladies were always under a duenna, so that there was no chance of an afternoon over the piano?”

      “But I assure you Miladi Cheriton was present,” said Alvar seriously.

      “Oh, that alters the question!” said Rupert. “But come, now, we have been hearing Jack’s views – let us have your confessions. Is the duenna always there, Alvar?”

      “Here is my sister,” said Alvar, with the oddest sort of simplicity, and yet with a tone that conveyed a sort of reproach to Rupert and – for the first time – of proprietorship in Nettie.

      Rupert burst into a shout of laughter: “My dear fellow, what are you going to tell us?”

      “She is a young girl; surely even here you do not say everything to her?” said Alvar, looking perplexed.

      “By Jove, no!” said Rupert; “not exactly.”

      “Since Nettie is here, we should not have asked you to tell us anything we did not wish her to hear,” said Cheriton, with a sense of annoyance that Alvar should be laughed at.

      “You did not ask me,” said Alvar quietly.

      At this moment Bob called Nettie so emphatically, that she was obliged unwillingly to go away.

      “Now then, Alvar,” said Rupert, “now for it. We won’t be shocked. Tell us how you work the duennas.”

      “It would not have been well to explain that to Nettie,” said Alvar seriously.

      “Why not?” said Jack, suddenly boiling up. “Do you think she would ever cheat or want a duenna? English girls can always be trusted!”

      “Can they?” said Rupert. “Shut up, Jack; you don’t understand. We only want you to tell us how you do in Spain. Affaires du coeur– you know, Alvar.”

      Alvar looked round with an air half-shrewd, half-sentimental; while Cheriton listened a little seriously. He knew very little of Alvar’s former life; perhaps because he had been too reticent to ask him questions; perhaps because Alvar found himself in the presence of a standard higher than he was accustomed to. Anyway, Nettie might have heard his present revelations.

      “There was a time,” he said, sighing, “when I did not intend to come to England – when I had sworn to be for ever a Spaniard. Ah, my cousin, if you had seen my Luisa, you would not have wondered. I sang under her window; I went to mass that I might gaze on her.”

      “Did you now? Foreign customs!” interposed Rupert; while Cherry laughed, though he felt they were hardly treating Alvar fairly.

      “I knew not how to speak to her. She was never alone; and it was whispered that she was already betrothed. But one day she dropped her fan.”

      “No, no – surely?” said Cherry.

      “I seized it, I kissed it, I held it to my heart,” said Alvar, evidently enjoying the narration, “and I returned it. There were looks between us – then words. Ah, I lived in her smiles. We met, we exchanged vows, and I was happy!”

      Rupert listened to this speech with amusement, which he could hardly stifle. It was inexpressibly ludicrous to Cheriton; but the fun was lost in the wonder whether Alvar meant what he said. This was neither like the joking sentiment nor the pretended indifference of an Englishman’s reference to such passages in his life; yet the memory evidently cost Alvar no pain. Jack sat, looking totally disgusted.

      “At last,” Alvar went on, “we were discovered. Ah, and then my grandfather was enraged, and her parents, they refused their consent, since she was betrothed already. I am an Englishman, and I do not weep when I am grieved, but my heart was a stone. I despaired.”

      “She must have been a horrid little flirt not to tell you she was engaged,” said Jack.

      “She did not know it till we had met,” said Alvar.

      “What awful tyranny!”

      “Ah, and she was your only love!” sighed Rupert.

      “No,” said Alvar simply, “I have loved others; but she was the most beautiful. But I submitted, and now I forget her!”

      “Hm – the truest wisdom,” said Rupert.

      Cherry was growing angry. He did not think that Rupert had any business to make fun of Alvar, and he was in a rage with Alvar for making himself ridiculous. That Alvar should tell a true love-tale with sentimental satisfaction to an admiring audience, or sigh over a flirtation which ought to have been a good joke, was equally distasteful to him. He burst out suddenly, with all his Lester bluntness, and in a tone which Alvar had hitherto heard only from Jack, —

      “If you fellows are not all tired of talking such intolerable nonsense, I am. It’s too bad of you,” with a sharp look at Rupert. “I don’t see that it’s any affair of ours.”

      “You’re not sympathetic,” said Rupert, as he moved away; for he was quite familiar enough with his cousins for such giving and taking.

      Chapter Twelve.

      The Oakby Ball

      “She went to the ball, and she danced with the handsome prince.”

      That week of gaiety, so unusual to Oakby, was fraught with great results. The dim and beautiful dream of the future which had grown with Cheriton Lester’s growth became a definite purpose. Ruth Seyton was his first love, almost his first fancy. Whatever other sentiments and flirtations had come across him, had been as light as air; he had loved Ruth ever since he had taught her to ride, and since she had tried to teach him to dance. He had always found her ready to talk to him of the thoughts and aspirations which found no sympathy at home, and still more ready to tease him about them. She was part of the dear and sacred home affections, the long accustomed life which held so powerful a sway over him, and she was besides a wonderful and beautiful thing, peculiar to himself, and belonging to none of the others.

      He had not seen her since the season when he had met her in town with Virginia; he did not know very much really about her, but she was kind and gracious to him, and he walked about in a dream of bliss which made every commonplace duty and gaiety delightful. Ruth was mixed up in it all, it was all in her honour; and though Cheriton’s memory at this time was not to be depended on, he had spirits for any amount of the hard work of preparation, and a laugh for every disagreeable.

      He regarded his tongue as tied till after he had taken his degree in the summer – he hoped with credit; after which his prospects at the bar with Judge Cheriton’s interest, were somewhat less obscure than those of most young men. He had inherited some small fortune from his mother, and though he could not consider himself a brilliant match for Miss Seyton, he would then feel himself justified in putting his claims forward. Many spoke with admiration of the entire absence of jealousy which made him take the second place so easily; but Cheriton hardly deserved the praise, he had no room in his mind to think of himself at all.

      His cousin Rupert was a more recent acquaintance of Ruth’s, though matters had gone much further between them. His attentions had not been encouraged by her grandmother, as, though his fortune was far superior to anything Cheriton possessed, his affairs were supposed to be considerably involved, and this was so far true, that it would have been very inconvenient to him to lay them open to inquiry at present. He hoped, however, in the course of a few months to be able so to arrange them, as to make it possible to apply to Ruth Seyton’s