was astonishingly lovely; her Spanish descent was apparent in her magnificent black tresses, lustrous eyes, and oval face of olive tinted with richest carmine. As I afterwards learnt, she was the daughter of a Spanish Government official of an ancient Castilian family, who had left his widow in such straitened circumstances that she was compelled to support herself by exhibiting performing mice and canaries at juvenile parties, until she met and married the Professor, who at that time was delivering recitations illustrated by an oxy-hydrogen lantern.
The second marriage had not been altogether a success, and, now that the Professor was a widower, I fancy that his relations with his imperious stepdaughter were not invariably of the most cordial nature, and that he would have been grateful to any one who succeeded in winning her hand and freeing him from her sway.
I did not know that then, however, though I was struck by the deferential politeness of his manner towards her, and the alacrity with which, after he had refreshed himself, he shuffled out of the room, leaving Lurana to entertain me single-handed.
That first evening with her was not unmixed joy. I had the consciousness of being on trial. I knew that many had been tried and found wanting before me. Lurana's attitude was languid, indifferent, almost disdainful, and when I went away I had a forlorn conviction that I should never again be asked to tea with her, and that the last series of tickets represented money absolutely thrown away!
And yet I was asked again – not only once, but many times, which was favourable as far as it went, for I felt tolerably certain that the Professor would never have ventured to bring me a second time into his daughter's presence, unless he had been distinctly given to understand that my society was very far from distasteful to her.
As I grew to know her better, I learnt the secret of her listlessness and discontent with life. She was tormented by the unbounded ambitions and the distinct limitations which embitter existence for so many young girls of our day.
The admiration which her beauty excited gave her little satisfaction; such social success as Highbury or Canonbury could offer left her cold and unmoved. She was pining for some distinction which should travel beyond her own narrow little world, and there did not seem to be any obvious way of attaining it. She would not have minded being a popular author or artist – only she could find nothing worth writing about, and she did not know how to draw; she would have loved to be a great actress – but unfortunately she had never been able to commit the shortest part to memory, and the pride of a de Castro forbade her to accept anything but leading rôles.
No wonder that she was devoured by dulness, or that there were moments when she beat her pinions like some captive wild bird against the cage of her own incompetence. Even I, although fairly content with my lot, would sometimes flap my own wings, so to speak, from sheer sympathy.
"It's maddening to be a nobody!" she would declare, as she threw herself petulantly back in her chair, with her arms raised behind her and her interlaced fingers forming a charming cradle for her head – a favourite attitude of hers. "It does seem so stupid not to be celebrated when almost everybody is! And to think that I have a friend like Ruth Rakestraw, who knows ever so many editors and people, and could make me famous with a few strokes of the pen – if only I did something to give her the chance. But I never do!"
Miss Rakestraw, I should explain, was an enterprising young lady journalist, who contributed society news and "on dits" to the leading Islington and Holloway journals, and was understood to have had "leaderettes" and "turnovers" accepted by periodicals of even greater importance.
"If only," Lurana burst out on one of these occasions, "if only I could do something once which would get my name into all the papers, set everybody thinking of me, talking of me, staring after me wherever I went, make editors write for my photograph, and interviewers beg for my biography, I think I should be content."
I made the remark, which was true but not perhaps startling in its originality, that fame of this kind was apt to be of brief duration.
"What should I care?" she cried; "I should have had it. I could keep the cuttings; they would always be there to remind me that once at least – but what's the use of talking? I shall never see my name in all the papers. I know I shan't!"
"There is a way!" I ventured to observe; "you might have your name in all the papers, if you married."
"As if I meant that!" she said, with a deliciously contemptuous pout. "And whom should I marry, if you please, Mr Blenkinsop?"
"You might marry me!" I suggested humbly.
"You!" she retorted. "How would that make me a celebrity. You are not even one yourself."
"I do not care to boast," I said, "but it is the simple fact that nobody in the entire tea-trade has a palate approaching mine for keenness and delicacy. Ask any one and they will tell you the same."
"You may be the best tea-taster in the world," she said, "but the purity of your palate will never gain you a paragraph in a single society paper. And even if it did, what should I gain? At the best a reflected glory. I want to be a somebody myself!"
"What's the use of trying to make ourselves what we are not?" I broke out. "If Fate has made us wooden ninepins in the world's nursery, we may batter our head against the walls as much as we like – but we can never batter it into a profile!"
I thought this rather neatly put myself, but it did not appeal to Miss de Castro, who retorted with some asperity that I was the best judge of the material of my own head, but hers, at least, was not wooden, while she had hitherto been under the impression that it already possessed a profile – such as it was.
She could not be brought to understand that I was merely employing a metaphor, and for the remainder of the evening her demeanour was so crushingly chilling, that I left in the lowest spirits, persuaded that my unlucky tongue had estranged me from Lurana for ever.
For some time I avoided Canonbury Square altogether, for I felt unequal to facing an elocution lesson unrecompensed by tea with Miss de Castro, and the halfhour or more of delightful solitude à deux which followed the meal – for it had never occurred to the Professor to provide his stepdaughter with a chaperon.
At last, when on the verge of despair, hope returned in the form of a little note from Lurana, asking whether I was dead, and inviting me, if still in existence, to join a small party to visit the World's Fair at the Agricultural Hall the next evening, and return to supper afterwards at Canonbury Square, an invitation which, need I say, I joyfully accepted.
We were only four; Miss Rakestraw and her fiancé, a smart young solicitor's clerk, of the name of Archibald Chuck, whose employer had lately presented him with his articles; myself, and Lurana. The Professor was unable to accompany us, having an engagement to read "Hiawatha" to a Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society that evening.
Part of the hall was taken up by various side-shows, shooting-galleries, and steam merry-go-rounds, which produced a discordant and deafening din until a certain hour of the evening, when the noises subsided, and Wooker and Sawkins' World-renowned Circus gave a performance in the arena, which occupied the centre.
Miss Rakestraw's connection with the Press procured us free passes to the reserved seats close to the ring; my chair was next to Lurana's, and she was graciously pleased to ignore our recent difference. The entertainment was of the usual variety, I suppose; but, to tell the truth, I was so absorbed in the bliss of being once more by her side and watching her face, which looked more dazzling than ever through the delicate meshes of her veil, that I have the vaguest recollection of the earlier items of the programme.
But towards the close there came a performance which I have good reason to remember.
An enormous elephant entered the circle, drawing a trolley, upon which was an iron cage containing forest-bred African lions. After the electric globes had been lowered, so as to illuminate the interior, "Niono, the Lion King," a dapper, well-made man, of very much my own height and figure, so far as I could judge, went into the cage and put the animals through various exercises. Niono was succeeded by Mlle. Léonie, the "Circe of the Carnivora," a pretty Frenchwoman, who, as it seemed to me, surpassed him in coolness and daring. There was nothing disagreeably