Berkeley drew a deep breath, and looked uneasily out of the window.
This was dangerous news, indeed! What, little Miss Butterfly, has
the boy with the gauze net caught sight of you already? Will he
trap you and imprison you so soon in his little gilded matrimonial
cage, enticing you thereinto with soft words and, sugared compliments
to suit your dainty, delicate palate? and must I, who have meant to
chase you for the chief ornament of my own small cabinet, be only
in time to see you pinioned and cabined in your white lace veils
and other pretty disguised entanglements, for his special and
particular delectation? This must be looked into, Miss Butterfly;
this must be prevented. Off to Calcombe Pomeroy, then, or other
parts unknown, this very next to-morrow; and let us fight out the
possession of little Miss Butterfly with our two gauze nets in
opposition--mine tricked as prettily as I can trick it with tags
and ends of art-allurements and hummed to in a delicate tune--before
this interloping anticipating Le Breton has had time to secure you
absolutely for himself. Too austere for you, little Miss Butterfly;
good in his way, and kindly meaning, but too austere. Better come
and sun yourself in the modest wee palace of art that I mean to
build myself some day in some green, sunny, sloping valley, where
your flittings will not be rudely disturbed by breath of poverty,
nor your pretty feathery wings ruthlessly clipped with a pair
of doctrinaire, ethico-socialistic scissors. To Calcombe, then,
to Calcombe--and not a day's delay before I get there. So much of
thought, in his own quaint indefinite fashion, flitted like lightning
through Arthur Berkeley's perturbed mind, as he stood gazing
wistfully for one second out of his pretty latticed creeper-clad
window. Then he remembered himself quickly with a short little
sigh, and turned to answer Herbert Le Breton's last half-sneering
innuendo.
'Something more than a pretty face merely,' he said, surveying
Herbert coldly from head to foot; 'a heart too, and a mind, for
all her flitting, not wholly unfurnished with good, sensible, solid
mahogany English furniture. You may be sure Harry Oswald's sister
isn't likely to be wanting in wits, at any rate.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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