A BOLD STROKE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1247, 23 January 1896, Page 15

A BOLD STROKE.

There was but one glass in which Mrs Vernon, a flighty little flirt of 40 summers, could see herself growing old her daughter Bell would grow up, an unfilial forwardness which her mother resented bitterly, and she would grow up pretty, an unpardonable aggravation of her offence. Eor, in the first place, she was too winsome to remain long unmarried, and her marriage meant to Mrs Vernon only her own superannuation. To be made at her age a mother-in-law and presently a grandmother !

The thought was insupportable. But, in the second place, Bell’s exceeding beauty attracted admiration and attentions which Mrs Vernon considered her exclusive due. Wherefore, it became the struggle of her life to suppress Bell. When the girl, provoked at once by the ridicule and by the rivalry of her former schoolmates, insisted —at 19—on having her hair put up and her frock let down, there was a fierce fight, which Bell won only by summoning to her aid her usual reinforcement and her last line of reserve—her father.

But if the girl could no longer be kept in the nursery, at least she could and would be kept in the background. But Bell, being at once too pretty to be negjected and too spirited to be suppressed, held her own court within her mother’s (an imperium in imperio), in which she played Tycoon to her mother’s Mikado — ruled while her mother but reigned. Most, at least, of her admirers had the tact to perceive that they must “ make love to the nurse for the sake of the child,” while none was quicker to recognise this than the adroit young barrister whom Bell most favoured.

It was, indeed, Bell’s only but recurring quarrel with Fred Drew that he led her mother by his attentions to make herself ridiculous. He pleaded with perfect truth that he could not throw himself partially into any part; and he might with no less truth that this part of cavaliere servente was forced upon him by the lady. From reading the works of lady novelists, Mrs Vernon had almost come to think such a dangerous admirer a fashionable necessity, while the admiration itself had become a personal necessity to her insatiabie vanity. The foolish, faded little woman fancied herself more fascinating than she had been at 20, since, while her beauty, as she flattered herself, was unimpaired, her skill in "playing it” had increased. Under this ridiculous delusion she set down her sarcastic husband’s biting comments upon what he called her “ dance Micabre coquetries ” to jealousy, and the shadow to her visions of fashionable intrigues was the dread of a judicial separation. She tried hard to persuade herself that lie was just the unsympathetic, hard, repellent, even brutal husband of her lady novelists’ imagination, but in her heart she know his worth, and loved him as she feared him.

Now this fear and feeling helped Fred to most of his interviews with Bell. He got to know that if he called close upon the time when Mr Vernon was due home from the city Mrs Vernon would, have-,Bell in' the room to play propriety in case of a sudden surprise from Othello. It was Fred’s consummate acting on these occasions which at once amused and annoyed Bell.

“ Oh, Miss Bell, you are growing,” in an amazed tone; and then, turning to her mother, he added, almost remonstrantly, “ Why, she has got her hair up.” “ She would have it up, and she goes on growing,” in an aggrieved tone, as though Bell’s wilfulness was responsible for this also.

“ She’ll soon be a young lady,” Fred observed, looking critically with his head on one side at Bell.

“And make me an-old one,” rejoined Mrs Vernon, uneasily, but with her most youthful smirk. “You!” cried Fred, interposing himself between Bell and her mother, at once to escape and to conceal the girl’s look of reproval. “Of course I married very young—a mere child, I might say.” “At Bell’s age ?” Fred asked, mischievously placing the good lady in the dilemma of admitting either her own age or the marriageableness of Bell. But the shallow little woman, like a child, could take in only one idea at a time. “ Oh, at her age I was in the nursery.” “ I’m glad we live in more precocious days, eh,” Miss Bell ? And how are we getting on with our singing ?” he asked, in a tone so grandmotherly that Bell was really relieved that he did not pat her on the cheek.

“ I should like to hear you sing some-

tiling,” he added, going to the piano, opening it, and taking his favourite song, “ The Message,” from her portfolio.. As Bell had a voice soft as moonlight set to music, Fred would have been “ all ear ” but for his intense longing to utter his love, which he whispered to her under the pretext of turning the music leaves. The consequence was that both song and accompaniment went to pieces together. “ You’d better sing something, you know,” her mother snapped viciously in her disappointment that Fred had not —as she had reckoned on —asked Bell to sing in order to enjoy unobserved a. tete-a-tete with herself.

“ I can’t sing to-day,” Bell said, tremulously, for her ears were ringing with Fred’s own sweet ‘'Message,” and her heart beating to it a passionate accompaniment.

“ I’ll play something,” she added, and proceeded to play without music a cold, classical piece, in order at once to recover herself and to get rid of Fred. That young gentleman had to take the hint and to return to his allegiance to Mrs Vernon. As he seated himself beside her, she asked in a suggestively soft voice, “ Have you been to see Pavlovich’s ‘ Helen ?’ ” —a picture then on view in London, much favoured by lovers because of the darkness of the room in which it was exhibited. “ Not yet; have you ?”

“I? How could I ? I have no one to take me. My husband is away all day, and even if he wasn’t he has no taste for ait.”

“ May I take you ?” “ Ifyou do not think—perhaps it wouldn’t be quite proper.” “Oh, we might take Miss Bell,” suggested Fred considerately. “It would be worth a. dozen painting lessons to her.” “ What. To see ‘ Helen ?’ The subject is hardly one to explain to a young girl,” Mrs Vernon answered severely.

Fred, though knowing that this silly little soul had no notion of Helenising with himself or any other Menelaus, could hardly restrain a smile at the Lucretian severity of her tone. Suddenly a brilliant idea struck him.

“I’ll tell you,” he cried, with excited eagerness, “you might lunch with me at the Epicurean restaurant—and wo could see the picture together afterwards.”

“ But—but—wouldn’t it look odd ?” faltered Mrs Vernon, longing and dreading to snatch this fearful joy. “Odd? No. Why? It’s almost more a ladies’ restaurant than a gentleman’s.” “Oh, here’s Mr Vernon,” she cried with appropriate agitation. “ I may expect you, then, at 2 to-morrow at the Epicurean.” She’nodded hurriedly and nervously, and then advanced to greet her husband, who entered at the moment.

Meanwhile, Fred took the opportunity of whispering to Bell; “ Darling, I believe I shall get her consent.”

Mother’s ? Have you spoken

“ No, but I shall to-morrow.”

“Oh, Fred, don’t. Wait. Wait,” she whispered in great agitation, and Fred had time only to whisper back, x-eassur-ingly, “ It will be all right, darling,” when her father advanced to greet him. Upon taking his leave Fred whispered in a conspirator’s tone to Mrs Vernon “ The Epicurean to-morrow at 2.” As he walked down the steps he said to himself—

“ It really is the only honourable way out, however shady it looks, I can’t go on like this, and I can’t tell her so in any other way, and since she means just as little as I do by this flirtation there’s no harm done to any one.” g Accordingly, Fred kept tryst next day at the Epicurean with afar lighter conscience than poor little Mrs Veimon, who began to feel that she was paying too big a price for conformity to the fashion, and even for the gratification of her inordinate vanity. Besides, was she not leading this poor ybung man astray and blighting a promising life ? However she would keep the engagement if only to remonstrate with him upon his infatuation and to cure him of it, should that, indeed, be possible now. She met Fred, therefore, with the portentous face of one whose stern, sad duty it was to break him crushing bad news. Hardly had she seated herself at one of the tables than she began with, to say the truth, some enjoyment of her new role, “Mr Drew, I feel I have done you wrong in coming here to-day. I have led you to think, I fear, that ” “ I say. Here’s Mr Vernon,” cried Fred. “ Oh, what shall I do ? What shall I say ?” she cried in real terror and even horror. “ You must say I asked you here to propose for your daughter's hand.” “For Bell?” “Yes, yes,” he whispered, and then said aloud for the benefit of the approaching Mr Vernon, “I know, Mrs Verncn, I am not worthy of her, bub if the devotioj^^^very

Vernon, for the hand of your daughter to her mother.”

“ Pooli. She’s not a child Hadn’t you better propose to herself? But perhaps you have, eh ? Perhaps you have ? Well, if you have her consent you have mine, and if you have mine you have her mother’s. Eh, Bessie ?”

“ She’s very young,” faltered Mrs Vernon.

“Just your age at your marriage, my dear. But you should have waited to asl. us till lunch was over,” seating himself like what he was—an invited guest. —E. A. Kay, in Chicago News.