第61章 CHAPTER XII(5)

"What have you gained?" asked Eugenia.

"An immense amount of wisdom."

"That 's a questionable advantage for a man who was already so wise!"

Acton shook his head. "No, I was a great fool before I knew you!"

"And being a fool you made my acquaintance? You are very complimentary."

"Let me keep it up," said Acton, laughing. "I hope, for our pleasure, that your brother's marriage will detain you."

"Why should I stop for my brother's marriage when I would not stop for my own?" asked the Baroness.

"Why should n't you stop in either case, now that, as you say, you have dissolved that mechanical tie that bound you to Europe?"

The Baroness looked at him a moment. "As I say?

You look as if you doubted it."

"Ah," said Acton, returning her glance, "that is a remnant of my old folly!

We have other attractions," he added. "We are to have another marriage."

But she seemed not to hear him; she was looking at him still.

"My word was never doubted before," she said.

"We are to have another marriage," Acton repeated, smiling.

Then she appeared to understand. "Another marriage?"

And she looked at the others. Felix was chattering to Gertrude;

Charlotte, at a distance, was watching them; and Mr. Brand, in quite another quarter, was turning his back to them, and, with his hands under his coat-tails and his large head on one side, was looking at the small, tender crescent of a young moon.

"It ought to be Mr. Brand and Charlotte," said Eugenia, "but it does n't look like it."

"There," Acton answered, "you must judge just now by contraries.

There is more than there looks to be. I expect that combination one of these days; but that is not what I meant."

"Well," said the Baroness, "I never guess my own lovers; so I can't guess other people's."

Acton gave a loud laugh, and he was about to add a rejoinder when Mr. Wentworth approached his niece. "You will be interested to hear," the old man said, with a momentary aspiration toward jocosity, "of another matrimonial venture in our little circle."

"I was just telling the Baroness," Acton observed.

"Mr. Acton was apparently about to announce his own engagement," said Eugenia.

Mr. Wentworth's jocosity increased. "It is not exactly that; but it is in the family. Clifford, hearing this morning that Mr. Brand had expressed a desire to tie the nuptial knot for his sister, took it into his head to arrange that, while his hand was in, our good friend should perform a like ceremony for himself and Lizzie Acton."

The Baroness threw back her head and smiled at her uncle; then turning, with an intenser radiance, to Robert Acton, "I am certainly very stupid not to have thought of that," she said.

Acton looked down at his boots, as if he thought he had perhaps reached the limits of legitimate experimentation, and for a moment Eugenia said nothing more. It had been, in fact, a sharp knock, and she needed to recover herself.

This was done, however, promptly enough. "Where are the young people?" she asked.

"They are spending the evening with my mother."

"Is not the thing very sudden?"

Acton looked up. "Extremely sudden. There had been a tacit understanding; but within a day or two Clifford appears to have received some mysterious impulse to precipitate the affair."

"The impulse," said the Baroness, "was the charms of your very pretty sister."

"But my sister's charms were an old story; he had always known her."

Acton had begun to experiment again.

Here, however, it was evident the Baroness would not help him.

"Ah, one can't say! Clifford is very young; but he is a nice boy."

"He 's a likeable sort of boy, and he will be a rich man."

This was Acton's last experiment. Madame Munster turned away.

She made but a short visit and Felix took her home. In her little drawing-room she went almost straight to the mirror over the chimney-piece, and, with a candle uplifted, stood looking into it.

"I shall not wait for your marriage," she said to her brother.

"To-morrow my maid shall pack up."

"My dear sister," Felix exclaimed, "we are to be married immediately!

Mr. Brand is too uncomfortable."

But Eugenia, turning and still holding her candle aloft, only looked about the little sitting-room at her gimcracks and curtains and cushions.

"My maid shall pack up," she repeated. "Bonte divine, what rubbish!

I feel like a strolling actress; these are my 'properties.' "

"Is the play over, Eugenia?" asked Felix.

She gave him a sharp glance. "I have spoken my part."