The Argosy — page 143: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

128 A Capriccio. that I dreaded the shock it would be to her feelings if he did not fully reciprocate it. The Comte D’Estrées arrived two days before the rest of the guests. He was a dapper little Frenchman, with well-twisted moustaches, and a most irreproachable air of gallantry, both in his faultless apparel and elegant manners. I should have liked to send him for a good tramp after partridges, with Dick and Fred, over stiff turnips, and with rough hedges and fences to scramble over! However, Lady Corisande appeared to find his society excessively pleasant ; and if ithad not been for what she told me, I should have imagined ¢/zs to be the “ adorable angel.” Sometimes I felt rather de trop in those days, and longed for the arrival of the rest of the visitors, hoping that the English element might be more natural and sympathetic to me than was the French one. Yet I should be ungrateful if I did not add that D’Estrées was really a very good and kind little man, who did not think his fine manners wasted even on an insignificant little *‘ companion ” like myself. ‘ Mademoiselle Celie laughs of me,” he said one day, good- temperedly. ‘‘I am not as the English young men.” ‘* Celia should go to Paris and see the world,” remarked Madame ; ‘‘ she wants chic.” ‘Pardon ! It would be to paint the lily,” he replied, with one of his queer little bows. ‘‘ Mademoiselle Celie suits her r6le—simplicity.” Left now a good deal alone, with nothing to do but attend to the comfort of the snoring Bijou and the snarling Mignon, I began to feel miserably home-sick and heart-sick, and longed to confide my hopeless secret to some sympathetic friend. I had sometimes wondered what it would be like to be what is called ‘fin love”; but I had never imagined that I could so quickly yield up my heart to any stranger as I had done to Lord Everril. My feeling for him was not merely the dazzle and glamour and excitement of a girl’s first passing fancy, but an all-enduring affection, such as none can experience twice in a lifetime. I was quite sensible of the folly of it all; it was more than probable that I should never see him again; and, besides, I knew, after what he had told me about his cousin, that it was best for him to forget me, as, perhaps, he had done already. I did not like that thought, heroic though it sounded ; and I re- member one day when it was too much for me, and great tears began to roll down my cheeks in the most doleful way. I did not hear Lady Corisande coming up behind me, until she laid her hands on my shoulders, and, turning my face up to her own, cried in surprise: ‘What! my merry shepherdess in tears? Celia! Celia! you are thinking again of ‘ nobody’?” “Oh, madame, I am very silly!” I said, trying to laugh through my tears, ‘f But—but ——” CONNIE IOOLKKS m