“She has gone out of the room for a few minutes,” said his lady in a frightened whisper. “Do go away.”
“What! when the coast is clear! Not if I know it.”
“Very well; till she arrives we can talk about ourselves, and even when she does we can surely chat about the weather.”
“Yes; he is quite gay to-day. He has found a model for his statue of Endymion.”
“A Greek! and pray what is a Greek doing down here?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. You will see him to-night, so don’t fall in love with him.”
“I don’t care for handsome men, they are so conceited.”
“You are handsome enough for me, at all events,” said Eunice coquettishly.
“What a charming compliment!” replied Crispin gayly; “for that I will give you a rose.”
But Crispin, alas! had not heard the warning, and, having plucked the finest rose he could see, returned to the window, to find himself confronted by the gaudy figure of The Parrot, whose beady eyes sparkled maliciously as he approached.
“What! a rose for me, dear Mr. Crispin?” she said, stretching out her hand, in which Crispin was unwillingly compelled to place his flower; “how kind of you! The young men of to-day are gallant after all. Look, Eunice, is not this flower charming? almost as charming as you are, Mr. Crispin. The Rose of Sharon—oh, Shiraz—you see I’ve read your book. Now, I have no time to talk, my dear Mr. Crispin, so you must go away for the present at all events. We will meet at luncheon, and if you are very good you may bring me in another rose.”
Mrs. Dengelton, having thus vanquished the enemy, disappeared with her daughter and shut the window, upon which poor Crispin walked away in a rage.
“Old cat!” he said, which was certainly neither polite nor poetical.
Secrets absurd Leading to woes, Only are heard Under the rose.
Maidens refuse, Lovers propose, Just as they choose, Under the rose.
How scandals spread Nobody knows, For they are said Under the rose.
When anything marvellous occurs in real life, wiseacres shake their heads, and say, “Wonderful! extraordinary! Truth is stranger than fiction.” But when a novel contains any incident out of the common, these same inconsistent people refuse to believe it on the plea that “Fiction is not stranger than truth.” They entirely forget that fiction is but a reflection of real life, and that man can imagine nothing, but merely reproduces what he sees around him. The sceptic will object,—“Fairy tales!” Well, my dear doubter, how do you know that fairy tales do not contain a germ of truth? there may have been fairies in the earlier ages of the world, and if so, the chronicles of Fairyland are as authentic as those of England—perhaps more so, seeing all histories are tinctured more or less with partisanship. Who would have believed in the mammoth, had not the huge beast been reconstructed by Cuvier? or in the moa, had not the skeleton of that gigantic bird been discovered in New Zealand? Nay, there is doubtless much truth in those extravagant travels of Marco Polo, Sir John Mandeville, and such-like wanderers. The middle ages were times of improbability, not of impossibility, for but little was known of the geographical world. Well, we of this nineteenth century have discovered all possible continents, and assume that we know everything; but such is not the case, for, though we may have exhausted the geographical world, we know comparatively few of the secrets of Nature. The pebble parable of Sir Isaac Newton will here occur to many minds, and it applies as truly to our times as to his own. Earth, sky, and water are full of secrets, many of which yet defy our efforts to learn and catalogue them. This century has been prolific of discoveries, but even add another hundred years of fresh revelations, and Nature will still give us riddles to solve out of her exhaustless store.