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 Deahe little lady in m, whose light brlets are falling over the coloured embroidery with which here fingers are busy, is of course Lucy Deane; and the fine young man who is leaning down from his chair to snap the scissors iremely abbreviated face of the `King Charles lying on the young ladys feet, is no other than Mr Stephe, whose diam, attar of roses, and air of nonchalant leisure at twelve oclo the day are the graceful and odoriferous result of the largest oil-mill and the most extensive wharf in St Oggs. There is an apparent triviality iion with the scissors, but your disment perceives at ohat there is a design in it which makes it emily worthy of a large-headed, long-limbed young man; for you see that Lucy wants the scissors and is pelled, relut as she may be, to shake her ris 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 renouhe great pleasure of perseg my poor Minny.
The foolish scissors have slipped too far over the knuckles, it seems, and Hercules holds out his entrapped fingers hopelessly.
`found the scissors! The oval lies the wrong lease, draw them off for me.
`Draw them off with your other hand, says Miss Lucy, roguishly.
`O but thats my left hand: Im not left-handed. Lucy laughs and the scissors are drawn off with geouches from tiny tips, whiaturally dispose Mr Stephen for a repetition da capo. Accly, he watches for the release of the scissors that he may get them into his possession again.
`No, no, said Lucy, stig them in her band, `you shall not have my scissain - you have straihem already. Now do Minny growling again. Sit up and behave properly, and then I will tell you some news.
`What is that? said Stephen, throwing himself bad hanging his right arm over the er 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 standi with a slight wave at the end like a thick crop of , and a half-ardent, half-sarcastic glance from under his well- marked horizontal eyebrows. `Is it very important news?
`Yes, very. Guess.
`Yoing to ge Minnys diet, and give him three ratafias soaked in a dessertspoonful of cream daily.
`Quite wrong.
`Well, then, Dr Kenn has been preag against buckram, and you ladies have all been sending him a round robin, saying "This is a hard doe; who bear it?"
`For shame! said Lucy, adjusting her little mouth gravely. `It is rather dull of you not to guess my news, because it is about something I mentioo you not very long ago.
`But you have mentioned many things to me not long ago. Does your femiyranny require that when you say, the thing you mean is one of several things, I should know it immediately by that mark?
`Yes, I know you think I am silly.
`I think you are perfectly charming.
`And my silliness is part of my charm?
`I didnt say that.
`But I know you like women to be rather insipid. Philip Wakem betrayed you: he said so one day when you were not here.
`O I know Phil is fier that point - he makes it quite a personal matter. I think he must be lov