"
Dora did not ask the curate to dinner that night, but he dropped
in about nine o'clock to ask her opinion as to the hymns on
Sunday; and finding Miss Trix and Newhaven in the small drawing
room, he sat down and talked to them. This was too much for
Trix; she had treated him very kindly and had allowed him to
amuse her; but it was impossible to put up with presumption of
that kind. Difficult as it was to discourage Mr. Ives, she did
it, and he went away with a disconsolate, puzzled expression. At
the last moment, however, Trix so far relented as to express a
hope that he was coming to tennis to-morrow, at which he
brightened up a little. I do not wish to be uncharitable--least
of all to a charming young lady---but my opinion is that Miss
Trix did not wish to set the curate altogether adrift. I
think, however, that Lady Queenborough must have spoken again,
for when Jack did come to tennis, Trix treated him with most
freezing civility and a hardly disguised disdain, and devoted
herself to Lord Newhaven with as much assiduity as her mother
could wish. We men, over our pipes, expressed the opinion that
Jack Ives' little hour of sunshine was past, and that nothing was
left to us but to look on at the prosperous, uneventful course of
Lord Newhaven's wooing. Trix had had her fun (so Algy Stanton
bluntly phrased it) and would now settle down to business.
"I believe, though," he added, "that she likes the curate a bit,
you know.
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