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HUN-NINETEEN
The Earl had knocked on the door by this time, and in a few moments his step was heard on the stairs. Patrick went out to meet him. "Come up, sir! We are both here!" he said. "How do you do? You are the most complete have indeed, you know! My head, when I awoke! My mouth too! There was never anything like it!"
"Was it very bad?" inquired the Earl, leisurely mounting the last three stairs. "Oh, beyond anything! But I don't mean to complain. I have had a famous time of it! But come into the drawing room! My sister is there, and I have something very particular to say to you. Liz, here is Lord Clements".Miss Tellaro, who for reasons best known to herself, has suddenly become absorbed in her embroidery, laid aside the frame and got up. She shook hands with the Earl, but before she could speak Patrick was off again. "I wish you would tell me, sir, what you call that way of tying your cravat! It is devilish natty!" "I don't call it anythinRelated chapters
DELICIA - DELIGHT - HUN-TWENTY
"You can have a dozen yachts", replied the Earl, "if only you will go away!" "I was sure you would agree!" declared Patrick radiantly. "I could not conceive of any reason why you should not! And do you think Evans' cousin..." "Yes", said the Earl. "I am persuaded Evans' cousin will be the very man for you. You had better go and talk it over with Evans before he leaves Romanina". Patrick was a good deal struck by this suggestion. "Upon my word, that is a capital notion! I believe I will do it at once, if you don't mind my leaving you?" "I can bear it", said the Earl. "Let me advice you not to lose any time in setting out". "Well, I think I had best be off at once", said Patrick. "And when I have talked it over with Evans I will come and tell you all about it". "Thank you very much", said the Earl gravely. "I shall be on the watch for you, I assure you". Miss Tellaro turned away to hide a
DELICIA - DELIGHT - THE END
"Now do you know why I am glad to be rid of my ward?" demanded the Earl."Oh", said Miss Tellaro foolishly, "I was afraid you meant me to marry your brother!""Were you indeed? And was all the determined flirting I have been watching between you merely to show me how willing you were to oblige me? Nonsensical child! I have been in love with you almost from the first moment of setting eyes on you"."Oh, this is dreadful!" said Miss Tellaro, shaken by remorse. "I disliked you amazingly for weeks!"The Earl kissed her again. "You are wholly adorable", he said."No, I am not", replied Miss Tellaro, a soon as she was able. "I am as disagreeable as you are. You would like to beat me. You said you would once, and I believe you meant it!""If I only said it once I am astonished at my own forbearance. I have wanted to beat you at least a dozen times, and came very near to doing it once - at Cockfield. But I still think you ado
DELICIA - DELIGHT - ONE
Tellaro was left behind, and the post chaise and four entered on a stretch of flat country which offered little to attract the eye, or occasional remark. Miss Elizabeth withdrew her gaze from the landscape and addressed her companion, a handsome young man who was bored to death in his corner of the chaise somewhat sleepily surveying the back of the nearest post boy."Oh, how tedious it is to be sitting still for so many hours at a stretch!" Elizabeth remarked. "When do we reach Florence, Patrick?"Her brother yawned. "Lord, I don't know! It was you who wanted to go to Rome".Miss Elizabeth made no reply to that, but picked up a Traveler's Guide from the seat beside her, and began to flutter the leaves over. Young Sir Patrick Tellaro yawned again, and observed that the new pair of wheelers that had been put in at Tellaro, were good sized strong wheels, very different from the last pair, which had both of them been touched in the wind.Miss Elizabeth was lost in th
DELICIA - DELIGHT - TWO
"Well, if Lord Clements does not want to be at the trouble of ordering or lives, so much the better", Patrick said. "You want to cut a dash in town, and I daresay I can find plenty of amusement if we have not a crusty old guardian to spoil the fun"."Yes", Miss Elizabeth agreed, but somewhat doubtfully. "But in common civility, we must ask his permission to set up house in Rome. I do hope we shall not find him set against us, regarding it as an imposition, I mean; perhaps thinking that our uncle might rather have been appointed instead of himself. It must appear very singular to him. It is an awkward business, Parte".A grunt being the only response to that, she said no more, but leaned back in her corner and perused the unsatisfactory communication she had received from Lord Clements.It was an awkward business. His lordship, who must, she reflected, be going on for sixty five or seventy years of age, showed a marked disinclination to trouble himself when
DELICIA - DELIGHT - THREE
"Yes, am I not telling you? The Champion - Darry Boa, you know - is to fight SteveAngelo tomorrow at some place or another around here. I did not perfectly catch the name. Thank God my dear, you had the good sense to reserve rooms for us, for they say there is no vacant room twenty miles from here! Come, come, don't be idling any longer, Lizzy!"The news that she had come to Florence on the eve of a prizefight could scarcely afford Miss Tellaro any form of gratification, but from having spent the greater part of her life in the company of her father and brother, and from having been used to hear a good deal of conversation about manly sports and to think them perfectly proper for gentlemen to take part in, she readily shared in Patrick's desire to be present at this fight. For herself, she had rather be anywhere else but there. Prizefighting could only disgust her, and although there would naturally be no question of her being a witness is the event, she must expect to hear all
DELICIA - DELIGHT - FOUR
He smiled. "No such thing, ma'am. We cannot tell but what if my room should properly be yours? My friend and I..." he made a sight gesture as though to indicate someone in the group behind him "... have acquaintance in the neighborhood, and may readily command a lodging at Hungertown Lodge. I - rather I should say we - are happy to be of service".There was nothing to do but thank him, and accept his offer. He vowed again, and withdrew to rejoin his friends. The landlord, relieved to have been rescued from a difficult situation, led the way out of the coffee room, and delivered his new guests into the care of a chamber maid. In a very little time they found themselves in possession of two respectable apartments on the first floor, and had nothing further to do than to await the arrival of their lugages.It was one of Miss Elizabeth's first concern to discover the name of her unknown benefactor, but by the time she had seen her baggage bestowed, and arranged for a truckle
DELICIA - DELIGHT - FIVE
Rounds the corner swept a curricle-and-four at breakneck speed. It was upon them, it must crash into them, there could be no stopping it. Patrick tried to wrench the horses round, cursing under his breath, Elizabeth felt herself powerless to move. She had a nightmarish vision of four magnificent chestnuts thundering down on her, and of a straight figure in a caped overcoat driving them. It was over in a flash. The chestnuts were swung miraculously to the off; the curricle's mudguard caught only the wheels of the gig, and the chestnuts came to a plunging standstill.The shock of the impact, though it was hardly more than a glancing scrape, startled the farmer's horse into an attempt to bolt, and in another moment one wheel of the gig was in the shallow ditch, and Miss Tellaro was nearly thrown from her seat.She righted herself, aware that her bonnet was crooked, and her temper in shreds, and found that the gentleman in the curricle was sitting perfectly unmoved
DELICIA - DELIGHT - SIX
To one used to the silence of a country night sleep at the Vinaio Inn, Florence, on the eve of a great fight was almost an impossibility. Sounds of loud revelry floated up from the coffee room to Miss Tellaro's bed chamber until the early hour of the morning; she dozed fitfully, time and again awakened by a burst of laughter below stairs, voices in the street below her window, or a hurrying footstep outside her door. After two o'clock the noise abated gradually, and she was able at last to fall into a sleep which lasted until three long blasts on a horn rudely interrupted it at twenty three minutes past seven.She started up in bed. "Good God, what how?"Her maid, who had also been awakened by the sudden commotion, slipped out of the truckle bed, and ran to peep between the blinds of the window. She was able to report that it was only the Fillinburg mail, and stayed to giggle over the appearance presented by the night-capped passengers descending from it to par
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