Miss Alicia

“ Alicia looked up. Her face was like the break of day for youngness and freshness, and a wisp of a bright curl misbehaved itself on her cheek, a flirtatious curl that knew exactly how to make the most of its opportunities. The young man's eyes approved of it.
"We have found Love!" cried Alicia, breathlessly. "Sophy and I have found Love in our garden! Isn't it wonderful and impossible and exciting and delightful? But it's true! And it just goes with this whole place!" cried Alicia, morning-eyed and May-faced. ”

“ Perhaps this thought flickered across Miss Alicia's mind among a number of other things. She had heard “dear papa” on Lady Mallowe, and, howsoever lacking in graces, the vicar of Rowcroft had not lacked an acrid shrewdness. Miss Alicia's sensitively self-accusing soul shrank before a hasty realization of the fact that if he had been present when the cards were brought up, he would, on glancing over them through his spectacles, have jerked out immediately: “What does the woman want? She's come to get something.” Miss Alicia wished she had not been so immediately beset by this mental vision. ”

“ Well, how's it to be, Alicia? Do we marry the baronet, and is poor Cousin Bob to be the best man at the wedding?"
"Sir Harry Towers is a noble-hearted young man," said Alicia, still trying to pass her cousin.
"But do we accept him—yes or no? Are we to be Lady Towers, with a superb estate in Hertfordshire, summer quarters for our hunters, and a drag with outriders to drive us across to papa's place in Essex? Is it to be so, Alicia, or not?"
"What is that to you, Mr. Robert Audley?" cried Alicia, passionately. "What do you care what becomes of me, or whom I marry? ”

“ Every one made a rush in that direction. Alicia was free—released from the grasping hands which had held her as in a vice. She took advantage of the moment, and rushed to the door which opened on the stair without stopping to say salám. She would have forgotten to snatch up her umbrella had she not intuitively seized on it as a weapon of defence. Alicia rushed so hurriedly down the stair that she nearly fell in her haste. She could hear the bibis above quarrelling over the jewel which she had flung away, which all coveted, but only one could possess. ”

“ He got up and gesticulated, taking in the big room and its big furniture. “Look at all this! It fell on me like a thunderbolt. It's nearly knocked the life out of me. I'm like a lost cat on Broadway. You can't go away and leave me, Miss Alicia; it's your duty to stay. You've just GOT to stay to take care of me.” He came over to her with a wheedling smile. “I never was taken care of in my life. Just be as noble to me as old Temple Barholm was to you: give me a sort of home.”
If a little gentlewoman could stare, it might be said that Miss Alicia stared at him. ”

“ Laura, sweet and grave-faced like her mother, is never as hilarious as the rest of us often are. My nephew Randolph was also absent. He, I suppose, was dining at his eternal "frat house."
It occurred to me how happy we could be, just the three of us, Alicia, Jimmie and I—plus, of course, Griselda. Alicia is beautiful now with a tender coloring and movements of exuberant gayety that are like wine to the heart. When her face is animated and her eyes flashing with merriment, the house seems charged with the very elixir of delight. ”

“ In a moment, therefore, Merriam found himself escorting Alicia down a sort of central aisle among the tables of the Peacock Cabaret, behind an excessively urbane head waiter, conscious that the rest of his guests were making a more or less imposing procession after them, and intensely conscious of suspended conversation throughout the great restaurant and of countless curious eyes staring across rosebuds and water bottles at himself.
"Say something to me," whispered Alicia. "You mustn't look self-conscious." ”

“ Alicia snatched at my words. "A man who ran away from them, loafing round for years? Oh, it will be easy, Uncle Ranny!" she chuckled. "He couldn't fool us!"
"And why, my little Portia, couldn't he?"
"Because," said Alicia thoughtfully, "he will always be thinking of himself and we—won't."
"You mean," I pressed, delightedly, "he'll be self-conscious and give himself away, the while we are clothed in our rectitude?"
"Yes!" she cried, with a laugh. "We'll be thinking of Jimmie and Laura and Randolph—and it's always easier to think what to do when you're thinking of somebody else—not of yourself." ”

“ Alicia knew she was clever and as she stood admiring herself in front of a full length mirror while awaiting the arrival of her guests she congratulated herself that she had made a success of her life. She had won those things which most women hold dear—wealth and social position. She had married a man she did not love, it was true, but other women had done that before her. If she had not brought her husband love she at least was not a wife he need be ashamed of. ”

“ But Lady Alicia, when she arrived with Dinky-Dunk 67 just before nightfall, didn’t impress me as very much of an invalid. She struck me more as a very vital and audacious woman, neither young nor old, with an odd quietness of manner to give a saber-edge to her audacity. I could hear her laughing, musically and not unpleasantly, at the mud-coated “democrat,” which on its return looked a good deal like a ’dobe hut mounted on four chariot wheels. But everything, for that matter, was covered with mud, horses and harness and robes and even the blanket in which Lady Alicia had wrapped herself. ”

“ I can see nothing. Must I turn to the right or the left?” said the young lady, stretching out her hand to feel the brick wall.
“This way,” cried Kripá Dé in front; and Alicia could now dimly trace the steps before her. They were steep, narrow, and not in particularly good condition. Alicia had a vague consciousness of plenty of dust below and cobwebs above.
“How strange it is,” thought the lady, as she groped her upward way, “that people of high caste and easy means, living in a large, lofty house, should not care for comfort, cleanliness or light. ”

“ The speech of Alicia, at the close of the fourth act of Jane Shore, puts the matter beyond doubt. In a scene of deep distress, the rhymes which finish the act, produce a certain gaiety and chearfulness, far from according with the tone of the passion.
Alicia. For ever? Oh! For ever!
Oh! who can bear to be a wretch for ever! ”

“ I can't help it. If I could care more for Alicia I would—but I can't help it that I've been caught by another woman. I can't marry Alicia when I don't love her.”
“Wait, wait, George! Don't, for heaven's sake, let your imagination, or whatever it is, run away with you now. You did love Alicia—can't you remember how you talked to me about her? And this new f-fancy—good heavens, you don't think you're serious about Miss Morrison, do you?” ”

“ My lady's beaming smiles, my lady's winning words, my lady's radiant glances and bewitching graces had done their work of enchantment, and Sir Michael had grown to look upon his daughter as a somewhat wilful and capricious young person who had behaved with determined unkindness to the wife he loved.
Poor Alicia saw all this, and bore her burden as well as she could. It seemed very hard to be a handsome, gray-eyed heiress, with dogs and horses and servants at her command, and yet to be so much alone in the world as to know of not one friendly ear into which she might pour her sorrows. ”

“ It was an ideal world, full of ideal beings.
Soon after tea the irresistible magnetism of Alicia's babies drew Alicia off the moor, and with her the champion player, Janet, Hilda and Edwin. Mrs. Rotherwas let them go with regret, adorably expressed. Harry would have liked to stay, but on the other hand he was delightfully ready to yield to Alicia. ”

“ Driscoll who spoke. Alicia had shrunk back, almost to where a little figure was cowering with wide eyes fixed in something like terror on the aroused father's face.
"Then hear me," murmured the girl, entrapped and suddenly desperate. "I wore Alicia's slippers and I took the jewels, because it was time that an end should come to your mutual dissimulation. The love I once felt for her she has herself deliberately killed. I had a lover—she took him. I had faith in life, in honour, and in friendship. She destroyed all. A thief— she has dared to aspire to him! ”

“ Mackaye's decorated drawing-room with half an hour for Alicia alone.
She was waiting for him, looking very sweet and young in a dress of soft blue. Alicia, pathetically enough, tried to recapture for him as much as possible of her first bloom; she made her dress definitely more youthful, tamed her regal head to something almost girlish, coiling her hair loose and low; and her manner to her lover corresponded in softness and submissiveness. And, alas! she did the wrong thing. George preferred her infinitely when she was most the woman. ”

“ I can go by myself,” said Alicia. She did not choose to set Robin smiling again at any weakness of hers.
When once in her doli, Alicia repented of the passing peevishness into which she feared that she had been betrayed. “It is a wrong, a mean thing,” thought the young wife, “to feel cross because others take small worries more patiently than I do. Robin is right: it is better to laugh than to cry over tiny troubles. A poor missionary I must be, indeed, if my fortitude cannot stand a hot room or the stinging of a musquito. ”

“ Alicia faces danger as she faces life, with the same dead calm with which the rock of Castellontano looks up to the sunrise, or down at nightfall into the blackness underneath!” He paused an instant—and then, with something like a sob, he caught his breath. “I pour out my heart to her—she wears an air of listening, but her soul is far away. If I ask her questions, she smiles vaguely or shakes her head. ”

“ The Hindus looked surprised at the question, which betrayed such ignorance of what they thought that every one knew or ought to know.
“Premi is a widow: of course she fasts every fortnight,” said Chand Kor; and so, as if tired with conversation on so insignificant a subject, she asked Alicia to sing.
Alicia was in no mood for singing; she rose and made her excuses as well as she could for not lingering longer in the zenana. “The sun is hot; my head pains me,” she said, in reply to the women’s expostulations. ”

“ Alicia looked up with a smile. Short as her acquaintance had been, she felt that the Premier was no longer a stranger. By opening his mind to her as he had done, he had claimed nothing less than friendship. He was, she told herself, like an old friend. And yet he was also unlike one; for, in intercourse with old friends, people are not subject alternately to impulses towards unrestrained intimacy and reactions to shy reserve. ”

“ Nixon recommend that Oliver should go abroad for the winter?" asked Alicia, after a pause. She was sitting on the arm of a chair, her slender feet hanging, and the combination of her blue linen dress with the fiery gold of her hair reminded Lady Lucy of the evening in the Eaton Square drawing-room, when she had first entertained the idea that Alicia and Oliver might marry. Oliver, standing erect in front of the fire looking down upon Alicia in her blue tulle--his young vigor and distinction--the carriage of his handsome head--was she never to see that sight again--never? ”

“ If they could have spoken, those noble women, what would they have said to this daughter of a felon?
She paused for a few minutes to look up at her favorite, Lady Alicia, and then she came up to him and stood before him in an the grace of her delicate loveliness, in all the pride of her dainty beauty. She was looking at the gorgeous Titian near him.
"Norman," she said, "the sun has turned those rubies into drops of blood--- they looked almost terrible on the white throat. What a strange picture! What a tragical face!" ”

“ Alicia, thoroughly disgusted at the woman’s mean covetousness, shook her head and rose from the charpai on which she had been seated.
“Give the charm back!” cried Darobti, becoming suddenly aware that whilst she was quarrelling with Jai Dé the cause of the dispute might be carried away.
“Give the charm back!” echoed more than one voice.
Alicia grasped the locket more tightly. It was the property of her cousin, not theirs; she would never give it up except to its rightful owner. A cry for help from above burst from the Englishwoman’s heart as she made one step forward. ”

“ Diana could not think with any zest of Alicia and her reception of the news. A succession of trifles had shown her quite clearly that Alicia was not her friend; why, she did not know. She remembered many small advances on her own part.
But at the mention of Sir James Chide, her face lit up.
"He has been so kind to me!" she said, looking up into Marsham's face--"so very kind!"
Her eyes showed a touch of passion; the passion that some natures can throw into gratitude; whether for little or much. Marsham smiled. ”

“ I waited for Dibdin.
And then suddenly, as is the way with me when I am at the bottom, my spirits bounded upward. Alicia would come back to me, I felt in a sudden surge of assurance. At that moment I felt sure that she was thinking of me, that she was yearning to return. And before I knew it, I was blocking in magnificent plans for her education, for making a splendid woman of her, even though she already seemed perfect, of supplementing nature's handiwork with all the force that was in me. I saw her resplendent, a shining creature, the woman of my dreams! What a florid designer is hope! ”

“ Alicia will sit with you, if I am engaged. She will walk with you, if you wish to go out into the garden. I have no doubt it will be a little unpleasant," said Lady Caroline, with a slight, agreeable smile, "to be constantly under surveillance, and of course it will last only until we leave home next week; but in the meantime, my dear, unless you will give up your penchant for Mr. Brand, you must submit to be watched. You cannot be allowed to run off with messages to this man as if you were a milliner's girl or a servant maid: we manage these matters differently." ”