Man's love is of man's life a thing apart.
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart.
Byron was right; and if we go no deeper, how can it well be otherwise, when we have our stud, our pipe, our Pytchley, our Newmarket, our club, our coulisses, our Mabille, and our Epsom, and they—oh, Heaven help them!—have no distraction but a needle or a novel! The Fates forbid that ouragrémensshould beless, but I dare say, if they had a vote in it, they'd try to get a triflemore. So Belle put his "love apart," to keep (or to rust, whichever you please) till sixA. M.that morning, when, having by dint of extreme physical exertion got himself dressed, saw his valet pack his things with the keenest anxiety relative to the immaculate folding of his coats and the safe repose of his shirts, and at last was ready to go and fetch the bride his line in theDailyhad procured him.
As Belle went down the stairs with Gower, who should come too, with his gun in his hand, his cap over his eyes, and a pointer following close at his heels, but Fairlie, going out to shoot over a friend's manor.
Of course he knew that Belle had asked for and obtained leave for a couple of months, but he had never heard for what purpose; and possibly, as he saw him at such an unusual hour, going out, not in his usual travelling guise of a wide-awake and a Maude, but with a delicate lavender tie and a toilet of the most unexceptionable art, the purport of his journey flashed fully on his mind, for his face grew as fixed and unreadable as if he had had on the iron mask. Belle, guessing as he did that Fairliewould not have disliked to have been in his place that morning, was too kind-hearted and infinitely too much of a gentleman to hint at his own triumph. He laughed, and nodded a good morning.
"Off early, you see, Fairlie; going to make the most of my leave. 'Tisn't very often we can get one; our corps is deuced stiff and strict compared to the Guards and the Cavalry."
"At least our strictness keeps us from such disgraceful scenes as some of the other regiments have shown up of late," answered Fairlie between his teeth.
"Ah! well, perhaps so; still, strictness ain't pleasant, you know, when one's the victim."
"Certainly not."
"And, therefore, we should never be hard upon others."
"I perfectly agree with you."
"There's a good fellow. Well, I must be off; I've no time for philosophizing. Good-bye, Colonel."
"Good-bye—a safe journey."
But I noticed that he held the dog's collar in one hand and the gun in the other, so as to have an excuse for not offering thatpoignée de mainwhich ought to be as sure a type of friendship, and as safe a guarantee for good faith, as the Bedouin Arab's salt.
Belle nodded him a farewell, and lounged down the steps and into the carriage, just as Fairlie's man brought his mare round.
Fairlie turned on to me with unusual fierceness, for generally he was very calm, and gentle, and impassive in manner.
"Where is he gone?"
I could not help but tell him, reluctant though I was, for I guessed pretty well what it would cost him to hear it. He did not say one word while I told him, but bent over Marquis, drawing the dog's leash tighter, so that I might not see his face, and without a sign or a reply hewas out of the barracks, across his mare's back, and rushing away at a mad gallop, as if he would leave thought, and memory, and the curse of love for a worthless woman behind him for ever.
His man stood looking at the gun Fairlie had thrown to him with a puzzled expression.
"Is the Colonel gone mad?" I heard him say to himself. "The devil's in it, I think. He used to treat his things a little carefuller than this. As I live, he's been and gone and broke the trigger?"
The devil wasn't in it, but a womanwas, an individual that causes as much mischief as any Asmodeus, Belphégor, or Mephistopheles. Some fair unknown correspondents assured me the other day, in a letter, that my satire on women was "a monstrous libel." All I can say is, that if itbea libel, it is like many a one for which one pays the highest, and which sounds the blackest—a libel that istrue!
While his rival rode away as recklessly as though he was riding for his life, the gallant bridegroom—as theCourt Circularwould have it—rolled on his way to Fern Wood, while Gower, very amiably occupying the rumble, smoked, and bore his position philosophically, comforted by the recollection that Geraldine's French maid was an uncommonly good-looking, coquettish little person.
They rolled on, and speedily the postilion pulled up, according to order, before the white five-bar gate, its paint blistering in the hot summer dawn, and the great fern-leaves and long grass clinging up round its posts, still damp with the six o'clock dew. Five minutes passed—ten minutes—a quarter of an hour. Poor Belle got impatient. Twenty minutes—five-and-twenty—thirty. Belle couldn't stand it. He began to pace up and down the turf, soiling his boots frightfully with the long wet grass, and rejecting all Tom's offers of consolation and a cigar-case.
"Confound it!" cried poor Belle, piteously, "I thought women were always ready to marry. I know, when I went to turn off Lacquers of the Rifles at St. George's, his bride had been waiting for him half an hour, and was in an awful state of mind, and all the other brides as well, for you know they always marry first the girl that gets there first, and all the other poor wretches were kept on tenter-hooks too. Lacquers had lost the ring, and found it in his waistcoat after all! I say, Tom, devil take it, where can she be? It's forty minutes, as I live. We shall lose the train, you know. She's never prevented coming, surely. I think she'd let me hear, don't you? She could send Justine to me if she couldn't come by any wretched chance. Good Heavens, Tom, what shall I do?"
"Wait, and don't worry," was Tom's laconic and common-sense advice; about the most irritating probably to a lover's feelings that could pretty well be imagined. Belle swore at him in stronger terms than he generally exerted himself to use, but was pulled up in the middle of them by the sight of Geraldine and Justine, followed by a boy bearing his bride's dainty trunks.
On came Geraldine in a travelling-dress; Justine following after her, with a brilliant smile, that showed all her white teeth, at "Monsieur Torm," for whom she had a very tender friendship, consolidated by certain half-sovereigns and French phrases whispered by Gower after his dinners at Fern Chase.
Belle met Geraldine with all that tenderempressementwhich he knew well how to put into his slightest actions; but the young lady seemed already almost to have begun repenting her hasty step. She hung her head down, she held a handkerchief to her bright eyes, and to Belle's tenderest and most ecstatic whispers she only answered by a convulsive pressure of the arm, into which he had drawn her left hand, and a half-smothered sob from her heart's depths.
Belle thought it all natural enough under the circumstances. He knew women always made a point of impressing upon you that they are making a frightful sacrifice for your good when they condescend to accept you, and he whispered what tender consolation occurred to him as best fitted for the occasion, thanked her, of course, for all the rapture, &c. &c., assured her of his life-long devotion—you know the style—and lifted her into the carriage, Geraldine only responding with broken sighs and stifled sobs.
The boxes were soon beside Belle's valises, Justine soon beside Gower, the postilion cracked his whip over his outsider, Perkins refolded his arms, and the carriage rolled down the lane.
Gower was very well contented with his seat in the rumble. Justine was a very dainty little Frenchwoman, with the smoothest hair and the whitest teeth in the world, and she and "Monsieur Torm" were eminently good friends, as I have told you, though to-day she was very coquettish and wilful, and laughedà propos de bottesat Gower, say what Chaumière compliments he might.
"Ma chère et charmante petite," expostulated Tom, "tes moues mutines sont ravissantes, mais je t'avoue que je préfère tes——"
"Tais-toi, bécasse!" cried Justine, giving him a blow with her parasol, and going off into what she would have calledéclats de rire.
"Mais écoute-moi, Justine," whispered Tom, piqued by her perversity; "je raffole de toi! je t'adore, sur ma parole! je——Hallo! what the devil's the matter? Good gracious! Deuce take it!"
Well might Tom call on his Satanic Majesty to explain what met his eyes as he gave vent to all three ejaculations and maledictions. No less a sight than the carriage-door flying violently open, Belle descending with a violent impetus, his face crimson, and his hat in his hand, clearingthe hedge at a bound, plunging up to his ankles in mud on the other side of it, and starting across country at the top of his speed, rushing frantically straight over the heavy grass-land as if he had just escaped from Hanwell, and the whole hue and cry of keepers and policemen was let loose at his heels.
"Good Heavens! By Jove! Belle, Belle, I say, stop! Are you mad? What's happened? What's the row? I say—the devil!"
But to his coherent but very natural exclamations poor Tom received no answer. Justine was screaming with laughter, the postilion was staring, Perkins swearing, Belle, flying across the country at express speed, rapidly diminishing into a small black dot in the green landscape, while from inside the carriage, from Geraldine, from the deserted bride, peals of laughter, loud, long, and uproarious, rang out in the summer stillness of the early morning.
"By Jupiter! but this is most extraordinary. The deuce is in it. Are they both gone stark staring mad?" asked Tom of his Cuba, or the blackbirds, or the hedge-cutter afar off, or anything or anybody that might turn out so amiable as to solve his problem for him.
No reply being given him, however, Tom could stand it no longer. Down he sprang, jerked the door open again, and put his head into the carriage.
"Hallo, old boy, done green, eh? Pity 'tisn't the 1st of April!" cried Geraldine, with renewed screams of mirth from the interior.
"Eh? What? What did you say, Miss Vane?" ejaculated Gower, fairly staggered by this extraordinary answer of a young girl, a lady, and a forsaken bride.
"What did I say, my dear fellow? Why, that you're done most preciously, and that I fancy it'll be a deuced long time before your delectable friend tries his hand at matrimony again, that's all. Done! oh, by George, he isdone, and no mistake. Look at me, sir, ain't I a charming bride?"
With which elegant language Geraldine took off her hat, pulled down some false braids, pushed her hair off her forehead, shook her head like a water-dog after a bath, and grinned in Gower's astonished eyes—notGeraldine, but her twin-brother, Pretty Face!
"Do you know me now, old boy?" asked the Etonian, with demoniacal delight,—"do you know me now? Haven't I chiselled him—haven't I tricked him—haven't I done him as green as young gooseberries, and as brown as that bag? Do you fancy he'll boast of his conquests again, or advertise for another wife? So you didn't know how I got Gary Clements, of the Ten Bells, to write the letters for me? and Justine to dress me in Geraldine's things? You know they always did say they couldn't tell her from me; I've proved it now, eh?—rather! Oh, by George, I never had a better luck! and not a creature guesses it, not a soul, save Justine, Nell, and I! By Jupiter, Gower, if you'd heard that unlucky Belle go on swearing devotion interminable, and enough love to stock all Mudie's novels! But I never dare let him kiss me, though my beard is down, confound it! Oh! what jolly fun it's been, Gower, no words can tell. I always said he shouldn't marry her; he'll hardly try to do it now, I fancy! What a lark it's been! I couldn't have done it, you know, without that spicy little French girl;—she did my hair, and got up my crinoline, and stole Geraldine's dress, and tricked me up altogether, and carried my notes to the hollow oak, and took all my messages to Belle. Oh, Jupiter! what fun it's been! If Belle isn't gone clean out of his senses, it's very odd to me. When he was going to kiss me, and whispered, 'My dearest, my darling, my wife!' I just took off my hat and grinned in his face, and said, 'Ain'tthis a glorious go? Oh! by George, Gower, I think the fun will kill me!"
And the wicked little dog of an Etonian sank back among the carriage cushions stifled with his laughter. Gower staggered backwards against a roadside tree, and stood there with his lips parted and his eyes wide open, bewildered, more than that cool hand had ever been in all his days, by the extraordinary finish of poor Belle's luckless wooing; the postilion rolled off his saddle in cachinnatory fits at the little monkey's narrative! Perkins, like a soldier as he was, utterly impassive to all surrounding circumstances, shouldered a valise and dashed at quick march after his luckless master; Justine clapped her plump French-gloved fingers with a million ma Fois! and mon Dieus! and O Ciels! and far away in the gray distance sped the retreating figure of poor Belle, with the license in one pocket and the wedding-ring in the other, flying, as if his life depended on it, from the shame, and the misery, and the horror of that awful sell, drawn on his luckless head by that ill-fated line in theDaily.
While Belle drove to his hapless wooing, Fairlie galloped on and on. Where he went he neither knew nor cared. He had ridden heedlessly along, and the Grey, left to her own devices, had taken the road to which her head for the last four months had been so often turned—the road leading to Fern Chase,—and about a mile from the Vane estate lost her left hind-shoe, and came to a dead stop of her own accord, after having been ridden for a couple of hours as hard as if she had been at the Grand Military. Fairlie threw himself off the saddle, and, leaving the bridle loose on the mare's neck, who he knew would not stray a foot away from him, he flung himself on the grass, under the cool morning shadows of the roadside trees, no sound in the quiet country round him breaking in on his weary thoughts, till the musical ring of a pony's hoofs came pattering down the lane.He never heard it, however, nor looked up, till the quick trot slackened and then stopped beside him.
"Colonel Fairlie!"
"Good Heavens! Geraldine!"
"Well," she said, with tears in her eyes and petulant anger in her voice, "so you have never had the grace to come and apologize for insulting me as you did last week?"
"For mercy's sake do not trifle with me."
"Trifle! No, indeed!" interrupted the young lady. "Your behavior was no trifle, and it will be a very long time before I forgive it, if ever I do."
"Stay—wait a moment."
"How can you ask me, when, five days ago, you bid me never come near you with my cursed coquetries again?" asked Geraldine, trying, and vainly, to get the bridle out of his grasp.
"God forgive me! I did not know what I said. What I had heard was enough to madden a colder man than I. Is it untrue?"
"Is what untrue?"
"You know well enough. Answer me, is it true or not?"
"How can I tell what you mean? You talk in enigmas. Let me go."
"I will never let you go till you have answered me."
"How can I answer you if I don't know what you mean?" retorted Geraldine, half laughing.
"Do not jest. Tell me, yes or no, are you going to marry that cursed fool?"
"What 'cursed fool'? Your language is not elegant, Colonel Fairlie!" said Geraldine, with demure mischief.
"Belle! Would you have met him? Did you intend to elope with him?"
Geraldine's eyes, always large enough, grew larger and a darker blue still, in extremest astonishment.
"Belle!—elope with him? What are you dreaming? Are you mad?"
"Almost," said Fairlie, recklessly. "Have you misled him, then—tricked him? Do you care nothing for him? Answer me, for Heaven's sake, Geraldine!"
"I know nothing of what you are talking!" said Geraldine, with her surprised eyes wide open still. "Oblige me by leaving my pony's head. I shall be too late home."
"You never answered his advertisement, then?"
"The very question insults me! Let my pony go."
"You never met him in Fern Wood—never engaged yourself to him—never corresponded with him?"
"Colonel Fairlie, you have no earthly right to put such questions to me," interrupted Geraldine, with her hot geranium color in her cheeks and her eyes flashing fire. "I honor the report, whoever circulated it, far more than it deserves, by condescending to contradict it. Have the kindness to unhand my pony, and allow me to continue my ride."
"You shallnotgo," said Fairlie, as passionately as she, "till you have answered me one more question: Can you, will you ever forgive me?"
"No," said Geraldine, with an impatient shake of her head, but a smile nevertheless under the shadow of her hat.
"Not if you know it was jealousy of him which maddened me, love for you which made me speak such unpardonable words to you?—not if I tell you how perfect was the tale I was told, so that there was no link wanting, no room for doubt or hope?—not if I tell you what tortures I had endured in losing you—what bitter punishment I have already borne in crediting the report that you were secretly engaged to my rival—would you not forgive me then?"
"No," whispered the young lady perversely, but smiling still, the geraniums brighter in her cheeks, and her eyes fixed on the bridle.
Fairlie dropped the reins, let go her hand, and left her free to ride, if she would, away from him.
"Will you leave me, Geraldine? Not for this morning only, remember, nor for to-day, nor for this year, but—for ever?"
"No!" It was a very different "No" this time.
"Will you forgive me, then, my darling?"
Her fingers clasped his hand closely, and Geraldine looked at him from under her hat; her eyes, so like an April day, with their tears, and their tender and mischievous smile, were so irresistibly provocative that Fairlie took his pardon for granted, and thanked her in the way that seemed to him at once most eloquent and most satisfactory.
If you wish to know what became of Belle, he fled across the country to the railway station, and spent his leave Heaven knows where—in sackcloth and ashes, I suppose—meditating on his frightful sell.Wesaw nothing more of him; he could hardly show in Norwich again with all his laurels tumbled in the dust, and his trophies of conquest laughing-stocks for all the troop. He exchanged into the Z Battery going out to India, and I never saw or heard of him till a year or two ago, when he landed at Portsmouth, a much wiser and pleasanter man. The lesson, joined to the late campaign under Sir Colin, had done him a vast amount of good; he had lost his conceit, his vanity, his affectation, and was what Nature meant him to be—a sensible, good-hearted fellow. As luck would have it, Pretty Face, who had joined the Eleventh, was there too, and Fairlie and his wife as well, and Belle had the good sense to laugh it over with them, assuring Geraldine, however, that no one had eclipsedthe G. V. whom he had once hoped had answered his memorable advertisement. He has grown wiser, and makes a jest of it now; it may be a sore point still, I cannot say—nobody sees it; but, whether or no, in the old city of Norwich, and in our corps, from Cadets to Colonels, nobody forgetsThe Line in the "Daily:" who did it, and who was done by it.
"What are you going to do with yourself this Christmas, old fellow?" said Vivian, of the 60th Hussars: the White Favors we call them, because, after Edgehill, Henriette Maria gave their Colonel a white rosette off her own dress to hang to his sword-knot, and all the 60th have like ribbons to this day. "If you've nothing better to do," continued their present Lieutenant-Colonel, "Come down with me to Deerhurst. The governor'll be charmed to see you; my mother has always some nice-looking girls there; and, as we keep the hounds, I can promise you some good hunting with the Harkaway."
"I shall be delighted," said I, who, being in the —— Lancers, had been chained by the leg at Kensington the whole year, and, of all the woes the most pitiable, had not been able to get leave for either the 12th or the 1st; but while my chums were shooting among the turnips, or stalking royals in Blackmount Forest, I had been tied to town, a solitary unit in Pall-Mall, standing on the forsaken steps of the U. S., or pacing my hack through thedreary desert of Hyde Park—like Macaulay's New Zealander gazing on the ruins of London Bridge.
"Very well," continued Vivian, "come down with me next week, and you can send your horses with Steevens and my stud. The governor could mount you well enough, but I never hunt with so much pleasure as when I'm on Qui Vive; so I dare say you, like me, prefer your own horses. I only hope we shan't have a confounded 'black frost;' but we must take our chance of the weather. I think you'll like my sisters; they're just about half my age. Lots of children came in between, but were providentially nipped in the bud."
"Are they pretty?"
"Can't say, really; I'm too used to them to judge. I can't make love to them, so I never took the trouble to criticise them; but we've always been a good-looking race, I believe. I tell you who's staying there—that girl we met in Toronto. Do you remember her—Cecil St. Aubyn?"
"I should say I did. How did she get here?"
"She's come to live with her aunt, Mrs. Coverdale. You know that over-dressed widow who lives in Hyde Park gardens, and, when she can't afford Brighton, shuts the front shutters, lives in the back drawing-room, and says, 'Not at home to callers?' St. Aubyn is as poor as a rat, so I suppose he was glad to send Cecil here; and the Coverdale likes to have somebody who'll draw men to her parties, which I'm sure her champagne will never do. It's the most unblushing gooseberry ever ticketed 'Veuve Clicquot.'"
"'Pon my life, I'm delighted to hear it," said I. "The St. Aubyn's superb eyes will make the gooseberry go down. Men in Canada would have swallowed cask-washings to get a single waltz with her. All Toronto wentmad on that score. You admired her, too, old fellow, only you weren't with her long enough for such a stoic as you are to boil up into anything warmer."
"Oh yes, I thought her extremely pretty, but I thought her a little flirt, nevertheless."
"Stuff! An attractive girl can't make herself ugly or disagreeable, or erect a brick wall round herself, with iron spikes on the top, for fear, through looking at her, any fellow might come to grief. The men followed her, and she couldn't help that."
"And she encouraged them, and shecouldhelp that. However, I don't wish to speak against her; it's nothing to me how she kills and slays, provided I'm not among the bag. Take care you don't get shot yourself, Ned."
"Keep your counsel for your own use, Syd. You put me in mind of the philanthropist, who ran to warn his neighbor of the dangers of soot while his own chimney was on fire."
"As how? I don't quite see the point of your parable," said Vivian, with an expression of such innocent impassiveness that one would have thought he had never seen her fair face out of her furs in her sledge, or admired her small ankles when she was skating on the Ontario.
The winter before, a brother of mine, who was out there in the Rifles, wrote and asked me to go and have some buffalo-hunting, and Vivian went out with me for a couple of months. We had some very good sport in the western woods and plains, and his elk and bison horns are still stuck up in Vivian's rooms at Uxbridge, with many another trophy of both hemispheres. We had sport of another kind, too, to the merry music of the silvery sledge-bells, over the crisp snow and the gleaming ice, while bright eyes shone on us under delicate lace veils, and little feet peeped from under heaps of sableand bearskin, and gay voices rang out in would-be fear when the horses shied at the shadow of themselves, or at the moon shining on the ice. Who thinks of Canada without in fancy hearing the ringing chimes of the gay sledge bells swinging joyous measure into the clear sunshine or the white moonlight, in tune with light laughter, and soft whispers, and careless hearts?
There we saw Cecil St. Aubyn, one of the prettiest girls in Toronto, then about nineteen. My brother Harry was mad about her, so were almost all the men in the Canada Rifles, and Engineers, and, 61st that were quartered there; and Vivian admired her too, though in a calmer sort of way. Perhaps if he had been with her more than a fortnight he might have gone further. As it was, he left Toronto liking her long Canadian eyes no more than was pleasant. It was as well so, perhaps, for it would not have been a good match for him, St. Aubyn being a broken-down gambler, who, having lost a princely fortune at Crocky's, and the Bads, married at fifty a widow with a little money, and migrated to Toronto, where he was a torment to himself and to everybody else. Vivian, meanwhile, was a great matrimonialcoup. Coming of a high county family, and being the only son, of course there was priceless value set on his life, which, equally, of course, he imperilled, after the manner of us all, in every way he could—in charges and skirmishes, yachting, hunting, and steeple-chasing—ever since some two-and-twenty years ago he joined as a cornet of fifteen—a man already in muscle and ideas, pleasures and pursuits.
At the present time he had been tranquilly engaged in the House, as he represented the borough of Cacklebury.
He spoke seldom, but always well, and was thought a very promising member, his speeches being in Bernal Osborne's style; but he himself cared little about hissenatorial laurels, and was fervently hoping that there would be a row with Russia, and that we should be allowed to go and stick Croats and make love to Bayadères, to freshen us up and make us boys again.
Next week, the first in December, he and I drove to Paddington, put ourselves in the express, and whisked through the snow-covered embankments, whitened fields, and holly hedges on the line down to Deerhurst. If the frost broke up we should have magnificent runs, and we looked at the country with a longing eye. Ever since he was six years old, he told me, he had gone out with the Harkaway Hack on Christmas-eve. When the drag met us, with the four bays steaming in the night air, and the groom warming into a smile at the sight of the Colonel, the sleet was coming down heavily, and the wind blew as keen as a sabre's edge. The bays dashed along at a furious gallop under Vivian's hand, the frosty road cracked under the wheel, the leaders' breath was white in the misty night; we soon flew through the park gate—though he didn't forget to throw down a sovereign on the snow for the old porteress—and up the leafless avenue, and bright and cheery the old manor-house, with its score of windows, like so many bright eyes, looked out upon the winter's night.
"By George! we did that four miles quick enough," said Vivian, jumping down, and shaking the snow off his hair and mustaches. "The old place looks cheery, doesn't it? Ah! there are the girls; they're sure to pounce on me."
The two girls in question having warm hearts, not spoilt by the fashionable world they live in, darted across the hall, and, regardless of the snow, welcomed him ardently. They were proud of him, for he is a handsome dog, with haughty, aristocratic features, and agrand air as stately as a noble about Versailles in the polished "Age doré."
He shook himself free, and went forward to meet his mother, whom he is very fond of; while the governor, a fine-looking, genial old fellow, bade me welcome to Deerhurst. In the library door I caught sight of a figure in white that I recognised as our belle of the sledge drives; she was looking at Vivian as he bent down to his mother. As soon as she saw me though, she disappeared, and he and I went up to our rooms to thaw, and dress for dinner.
By the fire, talking to Blanche Vivian, stood Cecil, when we went down to the drawing-room. She always makes me think of a Sèvres or Dresden figure, her coloring is so delicate, and yet brilliant; and if you were to see her Canadian eyes, her waving chestnut hair, and her instantaneous, radiant, coquettish smiles, you would not wonder at the Toronto men losing their heads about her.
"Why, Cecil, you never told me you knew Sydney!" cried Blanche, as Vivian shook hands with the St. Aubyn. "Where did you meet him? how long have you been acquainted? why did you never tell me?"
"How could I tell Colonel Vivian was your brother?" said Cecil, playing with a little silver Cupid driving a barrowful of matches on the mantelpiece till she tumbled all his matches into the fender.
"You might have asked. Never mind the wax-lights," said Blanche, who, not having been long out, had a habit of saying anything that came into her head. "When did you see him? Tell me, Sydney, if she won't."
"Oh, in Canada, dear!" interrupted Cecil, quickly. "But it was for so short a time I should have thought Colonel Vivian would have forgotten my face, and name, and existence."
"Nay, Miss St. Aubyn," said Vivian, smiling. "Pardonme, but I think you must know your own power too well to think that any man who has seen you once could hope for his own peace to forget you."
The words of course were flattering, but his quizzical smile made them doubtful. Cecil evidently took them as satire. "At least, you've forgotten anything we talked about at Toronto," she said, rather impatiently, "for I remember telling you I detested compliments."
"I shouldn't have guessed it," murmured Vivian, stroking his mustaches.
"And you," Cecil went on, regardless of the interruption, "told me you never complimented any woman you respected; so that speech just now doesn't say much for your opinion of me."
"How dare I begin to like you?" laughed Vivian.
"Don't you know Levinge and Castlereagh were great friends of mine? Poor fellows! the sole object of their desires now is six feet of Crimean sod, if we're lucky enough to get out there." Cecil colored. Levinge's and Castlereagh's hard drinking and gloomy aspect at mess were popularly attributed to the witchery of the St. Aubyn. Canada, while she was in it, was as fatal to the Service as the Cape or the cholera.
"If I talked so romantically, Colonel Vivian, with what superb mockery you would curl your mustaches. Surely the Iron Hand (wasn't that your sobriquet in Caffreland?) does not believe in broken hearts?"
"Perhaps not; but Idobelieve in some people's liking to try and break them."
"So do I. It is a favorite pastime with your sex," said Cecil, beating the hearth-rug impatiently with her little satin shoe.
"I don't think we often attack," laughed Vivian. "We sometimes yield out of amiability, and we sometimestake out the foils in self-defence, though we are no match for those delicate hands that use their Damascus blades so skilfully. We soon learn to cry quarter!"
"To a dozen different conquerors in as many months, then!" cried Cecil, with a defiant toss of her head.
Vivian looked down on her as a Newfoundland might look down on a small and impetuous-minded King Charles, who is hoping to irritate him. Just then three other people staying there came in. A fat old dowager and a thin daughter, who had turquoise eyes, and from whom, being a great pianist, we all fled in mortal terror of a hailstorm of Thalberg and Hertz, and a cousin of Syd's, Cossetting, a young chap, a blondin, with fair curls parted down the centre, whose brains were small, hands like a girl's, and thoughts centred on dewbouquetsand his own beauty, but who, having a baronetcy, with much tin, was strongly set upon by the turquoise eyes, but appeared himself to lean more towards the Canadian, as a greater contrast to himself, I suppose.
"How do you do, Cos?" said Vivian, carelessly. The Iron Hand very naturally scorned this effeminatepatte de velours.
"You here!" lisped the baronet. "Delighted to see you! thought you'd killed yourself over a fence, or something, before this——"
"Why, Horace," burst in energetic little Blanche, "I have told you for the last month that he was coming down for Christmas."
"Did you, my dear child?" said Cos. "'Pon my life I forgot it. Miss St. Aubyn, my man Cléante (he's the handiest dog—he once belonged to the Duc d'Aumale) has just discovered something quite new—there's no perfume like it; he calls it 'Fleurs des Tilleuls,' and the best of it is, nobody can have it. If you'll allow me——"
"Everybody seems to make it their duty to forget Sydney," muttered Blanche, as the Baronet murmured the rest of his speech inaudibly.
"Never mind, petite; I can bear it," laughed Vivian, leaning against the mantelpiece with that look of quiet strength characteristic of both his mind and body.
Cecil overheard the whisper, and flushed a quick look at him; then turning to Cossetting, talked over the "Fleurs des Tilleuls" as if her whole mind was absorbed inbouquet.
When dinner was announced, Vivian troubled himself, however, to give his arm to Cecil, and, tossing his head back in the direction of the turquoise eyes, said to the discomfited Horace, "You sing, don't you, Cosset? Miss Screechington will bore you less than she would me."
"Is it, then, because I 'bore you less' that you do me the honor?" asked Cecil, quickly.
"Yes," said Syd, calmly; "or, rather, to put it more courteously, you amuse me more."
"Monseigneur! je vous remercie," said Cecil, her long almond eyes sparkling dangerously. "You promote me to the same rank with an opera, a hookah, a rat-hunt, and a French novel?"
"And," Vivian went on tranquilly, "I dare say I shall amuseyoubetter than that poor little fool with his lisp and his talk of the toilet, and his hands that never pulled in a thorough-bred or aided a rowing match."
"Oh, we're not in the Iliad and Odyssey days to deify physical strength," said Cecil, who secretly adored it, as all women do; "nor yet among the Pawnees to reverence a man according to his scalps. Though Sir Horace may not have followed your example and jeopardised his life on every possible occasion, he is very handsome, and can be very agreeable."
"Is it possible you can endure that fop?" said Vivian, quickly.
"Certainly. Why not?"
The Colonel stroked his moustache contemptuously. "I should have fancied you more difficile, that is all; but Cos is, as you say, good-looking, and very well off. I wish——"
"What? That you were 'less bored?'"
"That I always wish; but I was thinking of Cos, there—milk-posset, as little Eardley in the troop says they called him at Eton—I was wishing he could see Levinge and Castlereagh, just asépouvantails, to make him turn and flee as the French noblesse did when they saw their cousins and brothers strung up à la lanterne."
"Wasn't it very strange," Blanche was saying to me at the same time, "that Cecil never mentioned Sydney? I've so often spoken of him, told her his troop, and all about him. (He has always been so kind to me, though he is eighteen years older—just twice my age.) Besides, I found her one day looking at his picture in the gallery, so she must have known it was the same Colonel Vivian, mustn't she Captain Thornton?"
"I should say so. Have you known her long?"
"No. We met her at Brighton this August with that silly woman, Mrs. Coverdale. All her artifices and falsehoods annoy Cecil so; Cecil doesn't mind saying she's not rich, she knows it's no crime."
"C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute," said I.
"Don't talk in that way," laughed Blanche. "That's bitter and sarcastic, like Sydney in his grand moods, when I'm half afraid of him. I am sure Cecil couldn't be nicer, if she were ever such an heiress. Mamma asked her for Christmas because she once knew Mr. St. Aubyn well, and Cecil is not happy with Mrs. Coverdale. Falseand true don't suit each other. I hope Sydney will like her—do you think he does?"
That was a question I could not answer. He admired her, of course, because he could not well have helped it, and had done so in Canada; and he was talking to her now, I dare say, to force her to acknowledge that hewasmore amusing than Horace Cos. But he seemed to me to weigh her in a criticising balance, as if he expected to find her wanting—as if it pleased him to provoke and correct her, as one pricks and curbs a beautiful two-year old, just to see its graceful impatience at the check and the glance of its wild eye.
Deerhurst was a capital house to spend a Christmas in. It was the house of an English gentleman, with even the dens called bachelors' rooms comfortable and luxurious to the last extent: a first-rate stud, a capital billiard table, a good sporting country, pretty girls to amuse one with when tired of the pink, the best Chablis and Château Margaux to be had anywhere, and a host who would have liked a hundred people at his dinner-table the whole year round. The snow, confound it! prevented our taking the hounds out for the first few days; but we were not bored as one might have expected, and our misery was the girls' delight, who were fervently hoping that the ice might come thick enough for them to skate. Cecil was invaluable in a country-house; her resources were as unlimited as Houdin's inexhaustible bottle. She played in Frenchvaudevilles and Sheridan Knowles's comedies, acted charades, planned tableaux vivants, sang gay wild chansons peculiar to herself, that made the Screechington bravuras and themes more insupportable than ever; and, what was more, managed to infuse into everybody else some of her own energy and spirit. She made every one do as she liked; but she tyrannised over us so charmingly that we never chafed at the bit; and to the other girls she was so good-natured in giving them the rôles they liked, in praising, and in aiding them, that it was difficult for feminine malice, though its limits are boundless, to find fault with her. Vivian, though he did not relax his criticism of her, was agreeable to her, as he had been in Canada, and as he is always to women when he is not too lazy. He consented to stand for Rienzi in a tableau, though he hates doing all those things, and played in the Proverbs with such a flashing fire of wit in answer to Cecil that we told him he beat Mathews.
"I'm inspired," he said, with a laughing bend of his head to Cecil, when somebody complimented him.
She gave an impatient movement—she was accustomed to have such things whispered in earnest, not in jest. She laughed, however. "Are you inspired, then, to takeHuon'spart? All the characters are cast but that."
"I'm afraid I can't play well enough."
"Nonsense. You cannot think that. Say you would rather not at once."
Vivian stroked his mustaches thoughtfully. "Well, you see, it bores me rather; and I'm not Christian enough to suffer ennui cheerfully to please other people."
"Very well, then, I will give the part to Sir Horace," said Cecil, looking through the window at the church spire, covered with the confounded snow.
Vivian stroked away at his mustaches rather fiercelythis time. "Cos! he'll ruin the play. Dress him up as a lord in waiting, he'll be a dainty lay figure, but for anything more he's not as fit as this setter! Fancy that essenced, fair-haired young idiot takingHuon—his lisp would be so effective!"
She looked up in his face with one of her mischievous, dangerous smiles, and put up her hands in an attitude of petition. "He must have the part if you won't. Be good, and don't spoil the play. I have set my mind on its being perfect, and—I will havesucha dress as theCountessif you will only do as I tell you."
Cecil, in her soft, childlike moods, could finish any man. Of course Vivian rehearsed "Love" with her that afternoon, a play that was to come off on the 23rd. Cos sulked slightly at being commanded by her to dress himself beautifully and play thePrince of Milan.
"To be refused by you," lisped Horace. "Oh, I dare say! No! 'pon my life——"
"My dear Cos, you'll have plenty of fellow-sufferers," whispered Syd, mischievously.
"Do you dare to disobey me, Sir Horace?" cried Cecil. "For shame! I should have thought you more of a preux chevalier. If you don't order over from Boxwood that suit of Milan armor you say one of your ancestors wore at Flodden, and wear it on Tuesday, you shall never waltz with me again. Now what do you say?"
"Nobody can rethitht you," murmured Cos. "You do anything with a fellow that you chooth."
Vivian glanced down at him with superb scorn, and turned to me. "What a confounded frost this is. The weathercock sticks at the north, and old Ben says there's not a chance of a change till the new moon. Qui Vive might as well have kept at Hounslow. To waste all the season like this would make a parson swear! If I'd foreseenit I would have gone to Paris with Lovell, as he wanted me to do."
I suppose the Colonel was piqued to find he was not the only one persuaded into his rôle. He bent over Laura Caldecott's chair, a pretty girl, but with nothing to say for herself, admired her embroidery, and talked with great empressement about it, till Laura, much flattered at such unusual attention, after lisping a good deal of nonsense, finally promised to embroider a note-case for him, "if you'll be good and use it, and not throw it away, as you naughty men always do the pretty things we give you," simpered Miss Laura.
"Hearts included," said Syd, smiling. "I assure you if you give me yours, I will prize it with Turkish jealousy."
The fair brodeuse gave a silly laugh; and Vivian, whose especial detestation is this sort of love-making nonsense, went on flirting with her, talking the persiflage that one whispers leaning over the back of a phaeton after a dinner at the Castle or a day at Ascot, but never expects to be called to remember the next morning, when one bows to the object thereof in the Ring, and the flavor of the claret-cup and the scent of the cigar are both fled with the moonbeams and forgotten.
Cecil gave the Colonel and his flirtation a glance, and let Cossetting lean over the back of her chair and deliver himself of some lackadaisical sentiment (taken second-hand out of "Isidora" or the "Amant de la Lune," and diluted to be suitable for presentation to her), looking up at him with her large velvet eyes, or flashing on him her radiant smile, till Horace pulled up his little stiff collar, coaxed his flaxen whiskers, looked at her with his half-closed light eyes—and thought himself irresistible—and Miss Screechington broke the string of the purseshe was making, and scattered all the steel beads about the floor in the futile hope of gaining his attention. Blanche went down on her knees and spent twenty minutes hunting them all up; but as I helped her I saw the turquoise eyes looked anything but grateful for our efforts, though if Blanche had done anything for me with that ready kindness and those soft little white hands, I should have repaid her very warmly. But oh, these women! these women! Do they ever love one another in their hearts? Does not Chloris always swear that Lelia's gazelle eyes have a squint in them and Delia hint that Daphne, who is innocent as a dove, is bad style, and horridly bold?
At last Cecil got tired of Cos's drawling platitudes, and walked up to one of the windows. "How is the ice, will anybody tell me? I am wild to try it, ain't you, Blanche? If we are kept waiting much longer, we will have the carpets up and skate on the oak floors."
I told her I thought they might try it safely. "Then let us go after luncheon, shall we?" said Cecil. "It is quite sunny now. You skate, of course, Sir Horace?"
"Oh! to be sure—certainly," murmured Cos. "We'd a quadrille on the Serpentine last February, Talbot, and I, and some other men—lots of people said they never saw it better done. But it's rather cold—don't you think so?"
"Do you expect to find ice in warm weather?" said Vivian, curtly, from the fire, where he was standing watching the commencement of the note-case.
"No. But I hate cold," said Horace, looking at his snowy fingers. "One looks such a figure—blue, and wet, and shivering; the house is much the best place in a frost."
"Poor fellow!" said Vivian, with a contemptuous twistof his mustaches. "I fear, however fêté you may be in every other quarter, the seasons won't change to accommodate you."
"Oh! you are a dreadful man," drawled Cos. "You don't a bit mind tanning yourself, nor getting drenched through, nor soiling your hands——"
"Thank Heaven, no!" responded Syd. "I'm neither a school-girl, nor—a fop."
"Would you believe it, Miss St. Aubyn?" said the baronet, appealingly. "That man'll get up before daylight and let himself be drenched to the skin for the chance of playing a pike; and will turn out of a comfortable arm-chair on a winter's night just to go after poachers and knock a couple of men over, and think it the primest fun in life. I don't understand it myself, do you?"
"Yes," said Cecil, fervently. "I delight in a man's love for sport, for I idolise horses, and there is nothing that can beat a canter on a fine fresh morning over a grass country; and I believe that a man who has the strength, and nerve, and energy to go thoroughly into fishing, or shooting, or whatever it be, will carry the same will and warmth into the rest of his life; and the hand that is strong in the field and firm in righteous wrath, will be the truer in friendship and the gentler in pity."
Cecil spoke with energetic enthusiasm. Horace stared, the Screechington sneered, Laura gave an affected little laugh. The Colonel swung round from his study of the fire, his face lighting up. I've seen Syd on occasion look as soft as a woman. However, he said nothing; he only took her in to luncheon, and was exceedingly kind to her and oblivious of Laura Caldecott's existence throughout that meal, which, at Deerhurst, was of unusual splendor and duration. And afterwards, when shehad arrayed herself in a hat with soft curling feathers, and looped up her dress in some inexplicable manner that showed her dainty high heels artistically, he took her little skates in his hand and walked down by her side to the pond. It was some way to the pond—a good sized piece of water, that snobs would have called the Lake, by way of dignifying their possessions, with willows on its banks (where in summer the sentimental Screechington would have reclined, Tennysonà la main), and boats and punts beside it, among which was a tub, in which Blanche confessed to me she had paddled herself across to the saturation of a darling blue muslin, and the agonised feelings of her governess, only twelve months before.
"A dreadful stiff old thing that governess was," said Blanche, looking affectionately at the tub. "Do you know, Captain Thornton, when she went away, and I saw her boxes actually on the carriage-top, I waltzed round the schoolroom seven times, and burnt 'Noel et Chapsal' in the fire—I did, indeed!"
The way, as I say, was long to the pond; and as Cecil's dainty high heels and Syd's swinging cavalry strides kept pace over the snow together, they had plenty of time for conversation.
"Miss Caldecott is looking for you," said Cecil, with a contemptuous glance at the fair Laura, who, between two young dandies, was picking her route over the snow holding her things very high indeed, and casting back looks at the Colonel.
"Is she? It is very kind of her."
"If you feel the kindness so deeply, you had better repay it by joining her."
Vivian laughed. "Not just now, thank you. We are close to the kennels—hark at their bay! Would you liketo come and see them? By-the-by, how is your wolf-dog—Leatherstockings, didn't you call him?"
"Do you remember him?" said Cecil, her eyes beaming and her lips quivering. "Dear old dog, I loved him so much, and he loved me. He was bitten by an asp just before I left, and papa would have him shot. Good gracious! what is the matter?—she is actually frightened at that setter!"
The "she" of whom Cecil so disdainfully spoke was Miss Caldecott, who, on seeing a large setter leap upon her with muddy paws and much sudden affection, began to scream, and rushed to Vivian with a beseeching cry of "Save me, save me!" Cecil stood and laughed, and called the setter to her.
"Here, Don—Dash—what is your name? Come here, good dog. That poor young lady has nerves, and you must not try them, or you will cause her endless expenses in sal volatile and ether; But I have no such interesting weaknesses, and you may lavish any demonstrations you please on me!"
We all laughed as she thus talked confidentially to the setter, holding his feathered paws against her waist; while Vivian stood by her with admiration in his glance. Poor Laura looked foolish, and began to caress a great bull-dog, who snapped at her. She hadn't Cecil's ways either with dogs or men.
"What a delightful scene," whispered Cecil to the Colonel, as we left the kennels. "You were not half so touched by it as you were expected to be!"
Vivian laughed. "Didn't you effectually destroy all romantic effect? You can be very mischievous to your enemies."
Cecil colored. "She is no enemy of mine; I know nothing of her, but I do detest that mock sentimentality,that would-be fine ladyism that thinks it looks interesting when it pleads guilty to sal volatile, and screams at an honest dog's bark. Did you see how shocked she and Miss Screechington looked because I let the hounds leap about me?"
"Of course; but though you have not lived very long, you must have learned that you are too dangerous to the peace of our sex to expect much mercy from your own."
A flush came into Cecil's cheeksnotbrought by the wind. Her feathers gave a little dance as she shook her head with her customary action of annoyance.
"Ah, never compliment me, I am so tired of it."
"I wish I could believe that," said Syd, in a low tone. "Your feelings are warm, your impulses frank and true; it were a pity to mar them by an undue love for the flattering voices of empty-headed fools."
Tears of pleasure started into her eyes, but she would not let him see it. She had not forgotten the Caldecott flirtation of the morning enough to resist revenging it. She looked up with a merry laugh.
"Je m'amuse—voilà tout. There is no great harm in it."
A shadow of disappointment passed over Syd's haughty face.
"No, if you do not do it once too often. Ihaveknown men—and women too—who all their lives through have been haunted by the memory of a slight word, a careless look, with which, unwittingly or in obstinacy, they shut the door of their own happiness. Have you ever heard of the Deerhurst ghost?"
"No," said Cecil, softly. "Tell it me."
"It is a short story. Do you know that picture of Muriel Vivian, the girl with the hawk on her wrist and long hair of your color? She lived in Charles's time,and was a great beauty at the court. There were many who would have lived and died for her, but the one who loved her best was her cousin Guy. The story says that she had plighted herself to him in these very woods; at any rate, he followed her when she went to join the court, and she kept him on, luring him with vague promises, and flirting with Goring, and Francis Egerton, and all the other gay gentlemen. One night his endurance broke down: he asked her whether or no she cared for him? He begged, as a sign, for the rosebud she had in her dress. She laughed at him, and—gave the flower to Harry Carrew, a young fellow in Lunsford's 'Babe-eaters.' Guy said no more, and left her. Before dawn he shot Carrew through the heart, took the rosebud from the boy's doublet, put it in his own breast, and fell upon his sword. They say Muriel lost her senses. I don't believe it: no coquette ever had so much feeling; but if you ask the old servants they will tell you, and firmly credit the story too, that hers and Guy Vivian's ghosts still are to be seen every midnight at Christmas-eve, the day that he fought and killed little Harry Carrew."
He laughed, but Cecil shuddered.
"What a horrible story! But do you believe that any woman ever possessed such power over a man?"
"I believe it since I have seen it. One of my best friends is now hopelessly insane because a woman as worthless as this dead branch forsook him. Poor fellow! they set it down to a coup de soleil, but it was the falsehood of Emily Rushbrooke that did it. But, for myself, I never should lose my head for any woman. I did once when I was a boy, but I know better now."
A wild, desperate idea came into Cecil's mind. She contrasted the passionless calm of his face with the tender gentleness of his tone a few moments ago, and she wouldhave given her life to see him "lose his head for her" as he had done for that other. How she hated her, whoever she had been! Cecil had seen too many men not to know that Syd's cool exterior covered a stormy heart, and in the longing to rouse up the storm at her incantation she resolved to play a dangerous game. The ghost story did not warn her. As Mephistopheles to Faust came Horace Cos to aid the impulse, and Cecil turned to him with one of her radiant smiles. She never looked prettier than in her black hat; the wind had only blown a bright flush into her cheeks—though it had turned Laura blue and the Screechington red—and the Colonel looked up at her as he put her skates on with something of the look Guy might have given Muriel Vivian flirting gaily with the roistering cavaliers.
"Now, Sir Horace, show us some of those wonderful Serpentine figures," cried Cecil, balancing herself with the grace of a curlew, and whirling here, there, and everywhere at her will as easily as if she were on a chalked ball-room floor. She hadn't skated and sledged on the Ontario for nothing. More than one man had lost his own balance looking after her. Cos wasn't started yet; one pair of skates were too large, another pair too small; if he'd thought of it he'd have had his own sent over. He stood on the brink much as Winkle, of Pickwickian memory, trembled in Weller's grasp. Cecil looked at him with laughing eyes, a shrewd suspicion that he had planted her adorer, and that the quadrille on the Serpentine was an offspring of the Cossetting poetic fancy. Thrice did the luckless baronet essay the ice, and thrice did he come to grief with heels in the air, and his dainty apparel disordered. At last, his Canadian sorceress took compassion upon him, and declaring she was tired, asked him to drive her across the pond. Cos, with an air oflanguid martyrdom and a heavy sigh as he glanced at his Houbigants, torn and soiled, grasped the back of the chair, and actually contrived to start it. Once started, away went the chair and its Phaeton after it, whether he would or no, its occupant looking up and laughing in the dandy's heated, disconcerted, and anxious face. All at once there was a crash, a plunge, and a shout from Vivian, who was on the opposite bank. The chair had broken the ice, flung Cecil out into the water with the shock, while her charioteer, by a lucky jump backwards, had saved himself, and stood on the brink of the chasm unharmed. Cecil's crinoline kept her from sinking; she stretched out her little hand with a cry—it sounded like Vivian's name as it came to my ears on the keen north wind—but before Vivian, who came across the ice like a whirlwind, could get to her, Cos, valorously determining to wet his wristbands, stooped down, and, holding by the chair, which was firmly wedged in, put his arm round her and dragged her out. Vivian came up two seconds too late.
"Are you hurt?" he said, bending towards her.
"No," said Cecil, faintly, as her head drooped unconsciously on Cos's shoulder. She had struck her forehead on the ice, which had stunned her slightly. The Colonel saw the chestnut hair resting against Cos's arm; he dropped the hand he had taken, and turned to the shore.
"Bring her to the bank," he said, briefly. "I will go home and send a carriage. Good Heavens! that that fool should have saved her!" I heard him mutter, as he brushed past me.
He drove the carriage down himself, and under pretext of holding on the horses, did not descend from the box while Horace wrapped rugs and cloaks round Cecil, who, having more pluck than strength, declared she was quitewell now, but nearly fainted when Horace lifted her out, and she was consigned by Mrs. Vivian to her bedroom for the rest of the day.
"It is astonishing how we miss Cecil," remarked Blanche, at dinner. "Isn't it dull without her, Sydney?"
"I didn't perceive it," said the Colonel, calmly; "but I am very sorry for the cause of her absence."
"Well, by Jove! it sounds unfeeling; but I can't say I am," murmured Horace. "It's something to have saved such a deuced pretty girl as that."
"Curse that puppy," muttered Syd to his champagne glass. "A fool that isn't fit for her to look at——"
Syd's and my room, in the bachelors' wing, adjoin each other; and as our windows both possess the convenience of balconies, we generally smoke in them, and hold a little chat before turning in. When I stepped out into my balcony that night, Syd was already puffing away at his pipe. Perhaps his Cavendish was unusually good, for he did not seem greatly inclined to talk, but leant over the balcony, looking out into the clear frosty night, with the winter stars shining on the wide white uplands and the leafless glittering trees.
"What's that?" said he sharply, as the notes of a cornet playing, and playing badly, Halévy's air, "Quand de la Nuit," struck on the night air.
"A serenade, I suppose."
"A serenade in the snow. Who is romantic idiot enough for that?" said Vivian contemptuously, nearly pitching himself over to see where the cornet came from. It came from under Cecil's windows, where a light was still burning. The player looked uncommonly like Cossetting wrapped up in a cloak with a wide-awake on, under which the moonlight showed us some fair hair peeping.
Vivian drew back with an oath he did not mean me to hear. He laughed scornfully. "Milk-posset, of course! There is no other fool in the house. His passion must be miraculously deep to drag him out of his bed into the snow to play some false notes to his lady-love. It's rather windy, don't you think, Ned. Good night, old fellow—and, I say, don't turn little Blanche's head with your pretty speeches. You and I are bound not to flirt, since we're sworn never to marry; and I don't want the child played with, though possibly (being a woman) she'd very soon recover it."
With which sarcasm on his sister and her sex, the Colonel shut down the window with a clang; and I remained, smoking four pipes and a half, meditating on his last words, for Ihadbeen playing with the child, and felt (inhuman brute! the ladies will say) that I should be sorry if shedidrecover it.