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Updated: June 12, 2025
Had Miss Demolines been christened Mary, or Fanny, or Jane, I think that John Eames would now have called her by either of those names; but Madalina was such a mouthful that he could not bring himself to use it at once. He had heard that among her intimates she was called Maddy.
"Thanks, mother," said Madalina; but she had not as yet opened her eyes, even for an instant. "Perhaps I had better go now," said Johnny. The old woman looked at him with eyes which asked whether "he didn't wish he might get it" as plainly as though the words had been pronounced. "Of course I'll wait if I can be of any service," said Johnny.
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 yet he was half proud of it.
"If you don't take care, young man," said his friend, "you will find yourself in a scrape with your Madalina." "What sort of a scrape?" "As you walk away from Porchester Terrace some fine day, you will have to congratulate yourself on having made a successful overture towards matrimony." "You don't think I am such a fool as that comes to?"
He went first to see Lily Dale at her uncle's lodgings in Sackville Street, from thence he was taken to the presence of the charming Madalina in Porchester Terrace, and then wound up the night with his friend Conway Dalrymple. When he got to his bed he felt himself to have been triumphant, but in spite of his triumph he was ashamed of himself. Why had he left Lily to go to Madalina?
As he thought of this he quoted to himself against himself Hamlet's often-quoted appeal of the two portraits. How could he not despise himself in that he could find any pleasure with Madalina, having a Lily Dale to fill his thoughts? "But she is not fair to me," he said to himself, thinking thus to comfort himself. But he did not comfort himself.
I will not venture to say that he much regretted the absence of Lady Demolines, or that he was keenly alive to the impropriety of being left alone with the gentle Madalina; but the customary absence of the elder lady was an incident in the romance which did not fail to strike him. Madalina was alone when he was shown up into the drawing-room on the evening of which we are speaking.
He did not believe in the Maria Clutterbuck friendship, either in its past or present existence, as described by Madalina. Indeed, he did not put strong faith in anything that Madalina said to him. In the handsome gentleman with two thousand a year, he did not believe at all.
Madalina, as she asked the question, looked full into his face, and shook her locks and smiled. When she shook her locks and smiled, there was a certain attraction about her of which John Eames was fully sensible. She could throw a special brightness into her eyes, which, though it probably betokened nothing beyond ill-natured mischief, seemed to convey a promise of wit and intellect.
Conversation on that subject was the natural progress of the Bayswater romance. And if Madalina would only call her friend by her present name, he had no strong objection to an occasional mention of the lady; but the combined names of Maria Clutterbuck had come to be absolutely distasteful to him.
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