Tom and Maggie went downstairs together into the room
where their father’s place was empty. Their
eyes turned to the same spot, and Maggie spoke,—
“Tom, forgive me—let us always love
each other”; and they clung and wept together.
The Great Temptation
A Duet in Paradise
The well-furnished drawing-room, with the open grand
piano, and the pleasant outlook down a sloping garden
to a boat-house by the side of the Floss, is Mr. Deane’s.
The neat little lady in mourning, whose light-brown
ringlets are falling over the colored embroidery with
which her fingers are busy, is of course Lucy Deane;
and the fine young man who is leaning down from his
chair to snap the scissors in the extremely abbreviated
face of the “King Charles” lying on the
young lady’s feet is no other than Mr. Stephen
Guest, whose diamond ring, attar of roses, and air
of nonchalant leisure, at twelve o’clock
in the day, are the graceful and odoriferous result
of the largest oil-mill and the most extensive wharf
in St. Ogg’s. There is an apparent triviality
in the action with the scissors, but your discernment
perceives at once that there is a design in it which
makes it eminently worthy of a large-headed, long-limbed
young man; for you see that Lucy wants the scissors,
and is compelled, reluctant as she may be, to shake
her ringlets back, raise her soft hazel eyes, smile
playfully down on the face that is so very nearly on
a level with her knee, and holding out her little
shell-pink palm, to say,—
“My scissors, please, if you can renounce the
great pleasure of persecuting my poor Minny.”
The foolish scissors have slipped too far over the
knuckles, it seems, and Hercules holds out his entrapped
fingers hopelessly.
“Confound the scissors! The oval lies the
wrong way. Please draw them off for me.”
“Draw them off with your other hand,”
says Miss Lucy, roguishly.
“Oh, but that’s my left hand; I’m
not left-handed.”
Lucy laughs, and the scissors are drawn off with gentle
touches from tiny tips, which naturally dispose Mr.
Stephen for a repetition da capo. Accordingly,
he watches for the release of the scissors, that he
may get them into his possession again.
“No, no,” said Lucy, sticking them in
her band, “you shall not have my scissors again,—you
have strained them already. Now don’t set
Minny growling again. Sit up and behave properly,
and then I will tell you some news.”
“What is that?” said Stephen, throwing
himself back and hanging his right arm over the corner
of his chair. He might have been sitting for
his portrait, which would have represented a rather
striking young man of five-and-twenty, with a square
forehead, short dark-brown hair, standing erect, with
a slight wave at the end, like a thick crop of corn,
and a half-ardent, half-sarcastic glance from under
his well-marked horizontal eyebrows. “Is
it very important news?”
