"Can you bear it? You will not like to play?" murmured the colonel to

her, as he rung for the cards, recollecting the many evenings of whist

with her mother and Sir Stephen.

"Oh! I don't mind. I like anything like old times, and my aunt does not

like playing--"

No, for Mrs. Curtis had grown up in a family where cards were

disapproved, and she felt it a sad fall in Fanny to be playing with all

the skill of her long training, and receiving grand compliments

from Lord Keith on joint victories over the two colonels. It was a

distasteful game to all but the players, for Rachel felt slightly hurt

at the colonel's defection, and Mr. Touchett, with somewhat of Mrs.

Curtis's feeling that it was a backsliding in Lady Temple, suddenly

grew absent in a conversation that he was holding with young Mr. Keith

upon--of all subjects in the world--lending library books, and finally

repaired to the piano, where Grace was playing her mother's favourite

music, in hopes of distracting her mind from Fanny's enormity; and there

he stood, mechanically thanking Miss Curtis, but all the time turning a

melancholy eye upon the game. Alick Keith, meanwhile, sat himself down

near Rachel and her mother, close to an open window, for it was so warm

that even Mrs. Curtis enjoyed the air; and perhaps because that watching

the colonel had made Rachel's discourses somewhat less ready than usual,

he actually obtained an interval in which to speak! He was going the

next day to Bishops Worthy, there to attend his cousin's wedding, and at

the end of a fortnight to bring his sister for her visit to Lady Temple.

This sister was evidently his great care, and it needed but little

leading to make him tell a good deal about her. She had, it seemed, been

sent home from the Cape at about ten years old, when the regiment went

to India, and her brother who had been at school, then was with her for

a short time before going out to join the regiment.

"Why," said Rachel, recovering her usual manner, "you have not been ten

years in the army!"

"I had my commission at sixteen," he answered.

"You are not six-and-twenty!" she exclaimed.

"You are as right as usual," was the reply, with his odd little smile;

"at least till the 1st of August."

"My dear!" said her mother, more alive than Rachel to his amusement at

her daughter's knowing his age better than he did himself, but adding,

politely, "you are hardly come to the time of life for liking to hear

that your looks deceived us."

"Boys are tolerated," he said, with a quick glance at Rachel; but at

that moment something many-legged and tickling flitted into the light,

and dashed over her face. Mrs. Curtis was by no means a strong-minded

woman in the matter of moths and crane-flies, disliking almost equally

their sudden personal attentions and their suicidal propensities,

and Rachel dutifully started up at once to give chase to the

father-long-legs, and put it out of window before it had succeeded in

deranging her mother's equanimity either by bouncing into her face, or

suspending itself by two or three legs in the wax of the candle. Mr.

Keith seconded her efforts, but the insect was both lively and

cunning, eluding them with a dexterity wonderful in such an apparently

over-limbed creature, until at last it kindly rested for a moment with

its wooden peg of a body sloping, and most of its thread-like

members prone upon a newspaper, where Rachel descended on it with her

pocket-handkerchief, and Mr. Keith tried to inclose it with his hands at

the same moment. To have crushed the fly would have been melancholy, to

have come down on the young soldier's fingers, awkward; but Rachel did

what was even more shocking--her hands did descend on, what should have

been fingers, but they gave way under her--she felt only the leather

of the glove between her and the newspaper. She jumped and very

nearly cried out, looking up with an astonishment and horror only half

reassured by his extremely amused smile. "I beg your pardon; I'm so

sorry--" she gasped confused.




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