Page:Alice Lauder.pdf/168

the year, and a clear conscience, could possibly desire.

It is true that some women may steal a heart while others dare not look over a hedge; and Lizzie had always appeared to belong to this pleasing and unblamed class of criminals. But now she had reached the invisible cordon which separates the safe from the unsafe—in the eyes of the world, at all events—and it was time for her to draw back. But the worst of it all was—and this struck a pang of cold foreboding into Alice’s soul—that Mrs. Austin’s sparkling face and geranium complexion were not so joyous and brilliant as they were wont to be. There was an unusual sweetness and gentleness in her voice and manner, a more wistful and far-away expression of thought in her liquid childlike eyes, that made her look far sweeter, but different, in some remote indescribable way. We all know the name of the magician who generally works these changes, and we know, too, that his victim is often the only one in the circle who is unconscious of his fatal spell. Some Frenchwoman has said, “Love is a tile that falls on one’s head,”—a saying that really sums up the philosophy of the whole matter in a nutshell. But supposing the tile falls on a young matron’s thoughtless curly head? Who is to warn her