The Buccaneers

Sir Helsmley imparted this information in a loud, almost challenging voice, as he always did when he had to communicate anything unexpected or difficult to account for. Explaining was a nuisance, and somewhat of a derogation. He resented anything that made it necessary, and always spoke as if his interlocutor ought to have known beforehand the answer to the questions he was putting.

After his bad fall in the hunting-field, the year before Guy’s return from Brazil, the county had confidently expected that the lonely widower would make an end by marrying either his hospital nurse or the Gaiety girl who had brightened his solitude during his son’s absence. One or the other of these conclusions to a career over-populated by the fair sex appeared inevitable in the case of a brilliant and unsteady widower. Coroneted heads had been frequently shaken over what seemed a foregone conclusion; and Guy had shared these fears. And behold, on his return, he found the nurse gone, the Gaiety girl expensively pensioned off, and the baronet, slightly lame, but with youth renewed by six months of enforced seclusion, apparently absorbed in a little brown governess who wore violet poplin and heavy brooches of Roman mosaic, but who (as Guy was soon to observe) had eyes like torches, and masses of curly-edged dark hair which she was beginning to braid less tightly, and to drag back less severely from her broad forehead.

Guy stood looking curiously at his father. The latter’s bluster no longer disturbed him; but he was uncomfortably reminded of certain occasions when Sir Helmsley, on the brink of an imprudent investment or an impossible marriage, had blushed and explained with the same volubility. Could this outbreak be caused by one of the same reasons? But no! A middle-aged governess? It was unthinkable. Sir Helmsley had always abhorred the edifying, especially in petticoats; and with his strong well-knit figure, his handsome auburn head, and a complexion clear enough for blushes, he still seemed, in spite of his accident, built for more alluring prey. His real interest, Guy concluded, was no doubt in the Rossetti kinship, and all that it offered to his insatiable imagination. But it made the son wonder anew what other mischief his inflammable parent had been up to during his own long absence. It would clearly be part of his business to look into his father’s sentimental history, and keep a sharp eye on his future. With these thoughts in his mind, Guy stood smiling down paternally on his father.

“Well, sir, it’s all right,” he said. “I’ve

Annabel did not re-appear that afternoon; and when the Duke, on his way up to dress for dinner, knocked at her sitting-room door, she was not there. He went on to his own dressing-room, but on the way met his wife’s maid, and asked if her Grace were already dressing.

“Oh, no, your Grace. I thought the Duchess was with your Grace...”

A little chill caught him about the heart.

Nan in some ways is still a child. She judges many things as a child would—”

I’m sure you would. But what if Nan turned out to be a woman who didn’t want to be shielded?”

You don’t want me to advise you, Duke. You want me to agree with you.”

dominant beauty, was her first impression; no proud angelic heads, ready for coronets or halos, such as she was used to in England; unless indeed the tall fair girl with such heaps of wheat-coloured hair and such gentian-blue eyes — or the very dark one, who was too pale for her black hair, but had the small imperious nose of a Roman empress... yes, those two were undoubtedly beautiful, yet they were not beauties. They seemed rather to have reached the last height of prettiness, and to be perched on that sunny lower slope, below the cold divinities. And with the other three, taken one by one, fault might have been found on various counts; for the one in the striped pink and white organdy, though she looked cleverer than the others, had a sharp nose, and her laugh showed too many teeth; and the one in white, with a big orange-coloured sash the colour of the poodle’s bow (no doubt she was his mistress) was sallow and red- haired, and you had to look into her pale starry eyes to forget that she was too tall, and stooped a little. And as for the fifth, who seemed so much younger — hardly more than a child — her small face was such a flurry of frowns and dimples that Miss Testvalley did not know how to

first thought was that she had never seen five prettier girls in a row; her second (tinged with joy) that Mrs. Russell Parmore would have been scandalized by such an exhibition, on the Saratoga railway platform, in full view of departing travellers, gazing employes, and delighted station loafers; her third that, whichever of the beauties was to fall to her lot, life in such company would be infinitely more amusing than with the Par- mores. And still smiling she continued to examine the mirthful mocking faces.

once you’ve got the soot and the fog in your veins you simply can’t live without them

the fashions and follies of a society which had always ignored her. At least life in England had a background, layers and layers of rich deep background, of history, poetry, old traditional observances, beautiful houses, beautiful landscapes, beautiful ancient buildings, palaces, churches, cathedrals. Would it not be possible, in some mysterious way, to create for one’s self a life out of all this richness, a life which should somehow make up for the poverty of one’s personal lot?

was not the atmosphere of London but of England which had gradually filled her veins and penetrated to her heart. She thought of the thinness of the mental and moral air in her own home; the noisy quarrels about nothing, the paltry preoccupations, her mother’s feverish interest