Burgo's Romance

A dark handsome face bent close to a fair and glowing one, a trembling white hand clasped in a sinewy brown one, two black eyes aflame with the light of love, two blue eyes cast down in a sweet confusion and shaded by long brown lashes.

The scene was the conservatory at the back of Mrs. Mordaunt's London house. It was a wilderness--that is to say, a wilderness where art reigned supreme--of shrubs, ferns, mosses, and sweet-smelling tropical flowers. Here and there a shaded lamp glowed with chastened radiance through the greenery; here and there a Chinese lantern hung suspended in mid-air like some huge transparent insect of many colours; here and there a statue gleamed snow-white through the leafage. Some one in the drawing-room was playing a dreamy waltz; in the breaks of the music the low silvery plash of a hidden fountain made music of another kind.

Time and the place conspired. The dark, handsome face bent closer, the lean brown fingers tightened their grasp, two hearts fluttered as they had never fluttered before. Then the words which one was dying to say and the other one dying to hear, broke forth in accents low, eager, and impassioned:

"Clara, darling, you must know that I love you. You must know that I have loved you ever since that day when----"

In smooth, clear accents a voice behind them broke in:

"Clara, love, I have been looking for you everywhere. I want you particularly. Mr. Brabazon, will you kindly open that slide a few inches? I can't think what Stevens has been about; the temperature is perfectly unbearable."

Burgo Brabazon was brought back to mundane matters with a shock as though a stream of ice-cold water had been poured down his back. He dropped Miss Leslie's trembling fingers and turned in some confusion to obey Mrs. Mordaunt's behest. Before doing so however, he contrived to whisper the one word "To-morrow."

By the time he had arranged the slide, Mrs. Mordaunt and her niece had disappeared. He muttered an execration under his breath, for Mr. Brabazon was by no means an exemplary young man.