ROSCORIA'S BETROTHED.

Rosetta Villiers was looking very uncomfortable. She had taken a seat opposite to her uncle, the admiral, and was cross-questioning him with a certain sternness, before which the old sinner was quailing considerably.

"Mr. Roscoria made you this offer, you say? It is most extraordinary: I scarcely have seen him."

"Why, Rosetta, he gave me to understand—at least, he hinted at something like an affaire de coeur between you."

"Affaire de fiddlestick!" cried Miss Villiers, rising in real indignation; "the man must have been exceeding! Why, upon my word, the conceit of these young men! I suppose, passing me in the lanes once or twice, he was slightly taken with my looks, and supposes me to have been equally entranced by his. I should really like to see him, uncle, to give him a piece of my mind."

"Well, that is the most sensible thing you have said, Rosetta," agreed the admiral, "for you must anyway see this fellow, and make it up with him somehow, to save my credit as a man of my word. I admit it's a deuced awkward business, but since I consented to it—in cold blood mind, Rosetta, I repeat that I had not had too much—I am bound to stick by the contract, and I suppose you, being included in it, are at least called upon to bear me out."'

"I never knew such a fearful scrape!" cried Rosetta, with a rush of despairing tears to her eyes. And then, being very brave of nature, she shook herself together and pondered. She was a real child still, only sixteen, and had never been much in the company of older ladies. She was, therefore, quite unprepared to enter upon any matrimonial plans of her own, and—clever as she was—dwelt in surprising ignorance of the world. No course then could her inexperience suggest, except that of saving her uncle's reputation by adhering to the contract. And as she thought and accustomed herself to the strange idea, her young face lighted up with humorous smiles, and she threw up her head with a delightful sense of enterprise.

"Sir," she began, turning solemnly upon the shamefaced admiral, "I feel that you have treated me with scant consideration, and plunged me early into the difficulties of a matronly career. Nevertheless, such is my care for the family reputation that—I'll marry Louis Roscoria!" she concluded, with a sudden gust of laughter.

"Yes; he is learned, is he not? And I remember him as very good-looking," she added, with a blush; "large, soft eyes, if I am not mistaken. I suppose one can fall in love, given a man so handsome. Allons—essayons! But if I don't give it him for this abominable deception, then I don't feel the blood of my Spanish ancestors on the mother's side coursing vigorously through my veins! Sir, I consent."

The admiral (who was honestly afraid of his spoilt niece) confounded himself in thanks and praise, and privately thanked also his stars that his ward had grown up so unsophisticated. With that tricksy Spanish spirit of hers, had she taken this affair in a different light she might have got me into fearful trouble, he thought, softly whistling directly the descendant of the hidalgos had turned the corner.

Next day was fixed for Roscoria's introduction. On hearing the complete success of his stratagem, Louis arrayed himself regardless of expense and hastened to Braceton Park. He gave Tregurtha leave to follow him in an hour—"to be introduced to the lady, who, I suppose, will then be my betrothed," he said.

Admitted into the drawing-room, Roscoria was left alone for what seemed to him an awful while. He grew nervous, and fluttered at every sound in the room. The clock annoyed him inexpressibly, and he started every time he faced a mirror. At last, in despair, he clutched his hat and stick, and sat down in orderly stiffness with his back to the door, and tried to abstract his thoughts. But they would dwell on his Lyndis, and it was no use to try and "sit like his grandsire carved in alabaster."

Suddenly there was a light sound of approach, and a tremulous, sweet voice close to his ear said simply:

"Good-afternoon, Mr. Roscoria."

Louis bounded on his chair as by galvanism, dropped his incumbrances, and spread forth a pair of eager arms, into which Rosetta, thinking this was all in the day's work, was actually preparing submissively to walk, when he saw that something was wrong.

"Ten thousand pardons!" he cried.

"Not at all," said Rosetta, smiling. "It is quite natural that you should feel deeply upon an occasion like this." And then she rubbed her small hands together bashfully, and waited with a beating heart for the beginning of his courtship.

"But I hope you see my mistake," urged Louis, still in smiling embarrassment. "I took you, in fact, for another lady."

"But; I am the other lady," said Rosetta.

"Ah!—Miss Villiers I was expecting."

"Precisely, I am Miss Villiers," said Rosetta, with firmness.

Roscoria looked the lady in the face. She was a very young looking creature, small, but rather strongly made, with a striking white face and great blue-black eye with a latent, passionate fire in the very depths of them. She had a resolute small chin and a decided mouth. Louis thought her, spite of her prettiness, the most tremendous interlocutor he had ever met. He turned absolutely faint with sudden horror, and grasped a chair, saying feebly:

"But Miss Villiers was tall and fair."

"Oh, my cousin do you mean? Yes; she will be in directly. But—but"—(Rosetta's face grew whiter and her eyes larger with the shock of discovery)—"you did not mean her, surely?"

"Excuse me—I did—and do."

"Then allow me to assure you, Mr. Roscoria, that the admiral did not. My cousin, Lyndis Villiers, is his niece and guest merely; it is I who am his ward since my father died in a naval engagement. He has made a very natural mistake. Lyndis is supposed to be out of the question, being engaged to marry a former pupil of yours—Mr. Eric Rodda. The admiral of course assumed that you meant me when you made your extraordinary request. I may mention that I thought it odd at the time."

"Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! I am punished this time!" groaned Roscoria, and, without even keeping up a pretense of ceremony, he sank on the table and sat there, rocking himself backward and forward. Rosetta laughed as one who had lost a load of care. She was now free to rejoice at the misfortunes of another, and for the first moment could not resist doing so. She stood opposite Roscoria and laughed at him and his discomfiture, like the child she really was.

"Not that I mean the least disrespect to you, my dear Miss Villiers," apologized Roscoria, out of the depths of his lamentations; "if only, like my predecessor Jacob when in a similar predicament, I could take both, how glad, how thankful I should be! But as it is, dear Miss Villiers, your cousin is so much to me—and—I thought I had got her!—in short, I know you will excuse me."

"Excuse you? Why, I am so thankful myself!" breathed out Rosetta.

"Thanks: it is very kind of you to say so. It makes it much easier for me," sighed Roscoria, gratefully.

At that moment enter the admiral, walking sideways and fumbling with the door-handle as one who fears to interrupt a tete-a-tete.

Roscoria came forward in penitent guise, and began to explain the unlucky mistake that had arisen, and how it was Miss Lyndis Villiers toward whom his heart had yearned.

The admiral snorted. His temper arose. Both the young people knew they were in for it. Sir John Villiers withered them both with his sea-faring eye.

"Goodness gracious!" exclaimed Roscoria, also a little irritably. "If I tear up that paper, and leave you in possession of that bit of land, and say no more of my marriage in connection with it, but try to gain Miss Lyndis Villiers as a separate undertaking, I suppose it will be all right?"

"Rosetta Villiers is an heiress, so if she pleases to throw herself away on a poor school master—he's no worse than the good-for-nothing military men who generally get the heiress—but Lyndis Villiers has not a penny, and I owe it to my second brother's memory to see that his orphaned child does not marry any impecunious young gentleman. Besides, she is suitably affianced to Mr. Rodda's eldest son. She is, therefore, out of the question."

"For the moment let us assume it," said Roscoria (who, we remember, was better informed); "but in that case, naturally, Miss Rosetta Villiers is free."

A very gentlemanly young man! thought Rosetta approvingly.

"I do not see it, sir," said the admiral, unfurling a handkerchief like a challenge flag. "I will neither give up the field nor permit you to go without your share in the bargain."

"Then give me a trifling consideration in money," suggested Roscoria—"if Miss Villiers will kindly pardon my entering upon such matters in her presence."

"That piece of land and my niece are, in my estimation, priceless. Only the one, sir, is a sufficient substitute for the other. Besides, I decline to have any shilly-shallying in this affair. It will be all over the place to-morrow that Rosetta accepted you and you threw her over."

"Let it be; I accepted the position," said Rosetta.

"I will not let it be," stormed the admiral. "If a young man thinks he can play fast and loose with a niece of mine, let him try—let him try!"

Here Rosetta, growing really frightened, hastily went out and returned with sherry and biscuits, which she pressed upon Roscoria's acceptance in the midst of his indignant rejoinder to her uncle. Mechanically the young man received the refreshments, and, holding his glass in one hand and taking a fierce bite of his biscuit, he said loudly, and turning toward the lady, "I protest again, Sir John Villiers, that I have not the slightest intention of playing fast and loose with Miss Rosetta, and she knows it as well as I do——"

And the door opened, and Lyndis Villiers was in the midst of them.

Now this time, of course, Roscoria was unnerved, and did nothing but turn very white and set down his glass and look away. Therefore Lyndis, hearing his last speech, seeing him in excited converse with her uncle and her pretty cousin, and eating and drinking as if he were there for the day, harbored a deep suspicion of her lover. There was a painful silence.

Then the admiral began again:

"Lyndis, come here! Do you know Mr. Roscoria?" and Lyndis lifted her clear gray eyes upon Louis and said, "Yes, certainly."

Then Roscoria recovered himself and shook his beloved by the hand, and murmured, "Good-morning, dearest; I am in an awful scrape."

And Rosetta confided to Lyndis that the admiral was past human guidance, and it was to be hoped that Providence would interfere. Of course Lyndis knew nothing of what was toward, and a laborious explanation had to take place, at the end of which the tall, fair Englishwoman looked rather shocked, and murmured something about "unjustifiable liberty," which was directed at Roscoria. He took up the attack by a counter-charge:

"Is it true that you, as the admiral says, are still engaged to Eric Rodda?"

Lyndis raised her eyes again to Roscoria's, this time with a furtive memory of love-making in them, and responded decidedly, "No, it is not."

"Sir," she continued, turning to the admiral, "Mr. Rodda is coming this afternoon to break this to you."

"Break it to me!" irascibly exclaimed the admiral. "How many more things am I to have broken to me this day? I should like to break a thick stick to these fellows! Why can't they stick to their engagements as I do? Precious attractive they seem to find you two young women. I wonder you are not ashamed, Lyndis, to come and tell me that your fellow has given you the slip too."

"Oh, I say!" expostulated Roscoria, and he dared—before the admiral—to put his arm round Lyndis' waist.

"Look at them, sir!" said Rosetta, in a motherly aside. "I'd go to the rack with Spanish fortitude before I would cross young love."

"Lieutenant Tregurtha!" announced the footman, and in came Dick with an air of "Bless you, my children!" about him. He was stopped on the very threshold, though, by recognizing in Miss Rosetta Villiers a dear, if new, attraction.

"Hallo!" he exclaimed. "Why, this is delightful, you know!" and shook her warmly and long by the hand.

Rosetta ordered a fresh glass for the sherry, and Lyndis inhaled the odor of the hyacinths in the flower-stand, whilst Roscoria bent over her, earnestly engaged in making his peace. The admiral, who had been quelled for the moment, burst out afresh. In trembling accents he said, waving his hand:

"Ladies, leave us, if you please!" and Lyndis and Rosetta, knowing what impended, hastily made for the door, Roscoria finding time to bow out his adored just before Sir John broke into a torrent, a storm, hurricane, gust, squall, half-gale, great-guns-blowing (or any other nautical simile) of language.

The young men listened with respectful disapprobation (for to attempt to stem the course of the admiral's diction was at all times dangerous). When the sea-faring gentleman's invention was somewhat ebbing, Tregurtha was in an undertone acquainted with its source. The moment when it seemed of any use, Roscoria began again on his suit. He pleaded, urged, lost his temper, found it again, represented, reasoned, chaffed the admiral, appealed to his friend—and all in vain. Lyndis was steadily denied to him.

"And Miss Rosetta?" asked the lieutenant; but this question, which to him was most important, got lost, as totally irrelevant to the matter in hand. In despair the tired and heated Roscoria was gently led away by his friend, and the moment they appeared out of doors they were cheered by the sight of the ladies, who were waiting in the garden.

"It has not gone well with you, has it, Louis?" asked Lyndis anxiously.

"Gone well! It has gone vilely, Lyndis. Why do you encourage such a curmudgeon of a peppery old Cambyses as an uncle?"

"My relative, if you please, sir," said the loyal Lyndis. "Why do you get us all into such scrapes, you inconsiderate, duped Hotspur?"

"Because I am in love, most beautiful; they say it affects the intellect. So tell me what we are to do now."

"Well—would you like to give me up?"

"Don't," prayed the lover, with an imploring gaze at his goddess. "Say something cheering, for—eh! it was warm in there."

Lyndis nodded her beautiful head sagaciously, passed her hand over Roscoria's forehead, smoothing it, and smiled to herself to see how his countenance cleared under the comfort.

"Dear one, to me you are an Immortal," he said, reflectively; "but—if you have an age, what might it be?"

"That will not do," said Lyndis; "a minor I am, and a minor I fear I shall remain for a year or two more. But if you will wait——"

Louis threw out his arms with a gesture of impatience. "I had rather run away with you at once," he said. "Let us elope."

"Mr. Roscoria, what a very rash idea!"

"Should you refuse, if I asked you?"

"I hope so," said Lyndis, thereby giving her lover much hope. "And now, as I am really angry with you, you may go."

"Yes, goddess; but I will hear thee again on this matter. May I——"

Lyndis did not expressly say he might not, so he did—that is to say, he kissed the golden head that was resting on his rough coat, from whence it was raised with tumbled bright hair spread abroad like the rays of the sun.

Tregurtha and Rosetta meantime had been looking over a hedge, commenting on scenery, the weather, and the crops. Rosetta was a born farmer. The sailor asked her tentatively:

"Did you agree to this plan of marrying my friend Roscoria?"

"I did," said the maiden, brightly.

"But surely you scarcely knew him well enough to love him? There must have been a strong elective affinity—or, bless me! I can't account for it."

"Love him! I never had spoken to him," laughed Rosetta.

"You would not have given him your hand without your heart?" persisted Tregurtha, with a strange, pained look, which, alas! she did not understand.

"Why, yes. If I had added my heart, think how great the sacrifice would have been. As it was, it was very amusing." Rosetta laughed again, at Roscoria this time, who came up to apologize for the awkward position in which he had stupidly placed her.

"Never mind, Mr. Roscoria," answered she. "I love adventures, and I owe this one to you. Only next time you ask for Miss Lyndis Villiers, let me advise you—'see that you get her.'"