THE BAYSWATER ROMANCE

Eames had by no means done his work for that evening when he left Mr Dale and Lily at their lodgings.  He had other business in hand to which he had promised to give attention, and another person to see who would welcome his coming quite as warmly, though by no means as pleasantly, as Lily Dale.  It was then just nine o’clock, and as he had told Miss Demolines—­Madalina we may as well call her now—­that he would be in Porchester Terrace by nine at the latest, it was incumbent on him to make haste.  He got into a cab, and bid the cabman drive hard, and lighting a cigar, began to inquire of himself over and over again whether it was well for him to hurry away from the presence of Lily Dale to that of Madalina Demolines.  He felt that he was half-ashamed of what he was doing.  Though he declared to himself over and over again that he never had said a word, and never intended to say a word, to Madalina, which all the world might not hear, yet he knew that he was doing amiss.  He was doing amiss, and half repented it, and he was half proud of it.  He was most anxious to be able to give himself credit for his constancy to Lily Dale; to be able to feel that he was steadfast in his passion; and yet he liked the idea of amusing himself with his Bayswater romance, as he would call it, and was not without something of conceit as he thought of the progress he had made in it.  ’Love is one thing and amusement is another,’ he said to himself as he puffed the cigar smoke out of his mouth; and in his heart he was proud of his own capacity for enjoyment.  He thought it a fine thing, although at the same moment he knew it to be an evil thing—­this hurrying away from the young lady whom he really loved to another as to whom he thought it very likely that he should be called upon to pretend to love her.  And he sang a little song as he went, ‘If she be not fair to me, what care I how fair she be.’  That was intended to apply to Lily, and was used as an excuse for his fickleness in going to Miss Demolines.  And he was perhaps, too, a little conceited as to his mission to the Continent.  Lily had told him that he was very glad that he was going; that she thought him very right to go.  The words had been very pleasant to his ears, and Lily had never looked prettier in his eyes than when she had spoken them.  Johnny, therefore, was rather proud of himself as he sat in the cab smoking his cigar.  He had, moreover, beaten his old enemy Sir Raffle Buffle in another contest, and he felt that the world was smiling on him;—­that the world was smiling on him in spite of his cruel fate in the matter of his real lovesuit.