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eO007252OM 




I 



AURORA FLOYD. 



IjOSTDON: mKTKD BT WTLUAH CL0WK8 AKD 80K8, STAIUOBD 8TBEFC 

XbkD VUAJUKO CBU68. 



AURORA FLOYD. 



M. B. BBADDON, 

▲ UTHOB OF "LADT ADDLBT'S SBOBBT. 



IN THEBB VOLUMES. 
VOL. L 



FIFTH EDITION. 



LONDON : 

TINSLEY BBOTHEES, 18 CATHEEINE STBEET, 

STEAND. 

1868. 

[The Tiffin (f TnmAaMm U reMnml.] 



TO 

ADMIBAL AND MRS. BASDEN, 

WITH THB 

AFFECTIONATE BEGABDS 

OF 

THE AUTHOB. 



CONTENTS. 



•^ 



• C5HAPTER I. 

PAOB 

HOW A BIOH BANEEB MABRTim AN ACTTBBSS . . 1 

CHAPTER II. 
ATJBOBA 28 

CHAPTER HI. 
WHAT BKOAMB OF THE DIAMOND BBAGELBT • • 42 

CHAPTER IV. 
APTEB THB BALL 68 

CHAPTER V. 

JOHN MELLISH 92 

CHAPTER VI. 
BEJEOTED AND AOOBPTED 115 

CHAPTER Vn. 
AUBOBA*S STBAN6B PENSIONEB .... 141 

CHAPTER VIII. 
POOR JOHN MELLISH OOMSS BACK AGAIN . • 170 



• •• 



Vm CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEB IX. 
HOW TALBOT BULSTBODB SPENT HIS 0HBISTMA8 . 192 

CHAPTEB X. 
FIOHTINO THE BATTLE 211 

CHAPTEB XI. 
AT THE ohAteau d'abqxtes • . . . 236 

CHAPTEB XIL 

8TEEYE HAB0BA7ES, THE "SOFTT'* • . . 249 

CHAPTEB XHL 
THE SPBINO UEETIKQ 279 



AURORA FLOYD. 



CHAPTER L 

' HOW A BICH BANEEB MABBIED AN AOTBESS. 

Faint streaks of crimson glimmer here and there 
amidst the rich darkness of the Kentish woods. 
Autumn's red finger has been lightly laid upon 
the ' foliage — sparingly, as the artist puts the 
brighter tints into his picture : but the grandeur 
of an August sunset blazes upon the peaceful 
landscape, and lights all into glory. 

The encircling woods and wide lawn-like mea- 
dows, the still ponds of limpid water, the trim 
hedges, and the smooth winding roads; undu- 
lating hill-tops, melting into the purple distance ; 
labouring men's cottages gleaming white from the 
surrounding foliage; solitary road-side inns with 
brown thatched roofs and moss-grown stacks of 

VOL. L B 



2 AURORA FLOYD. 

lop-sided chimneys ; noble mansions hiding be- 
hind ancestral oaks; tiny Gothic edifices; Swiss 
and rustic lodges; pillared gates surmounted by 
escutcheons hewn in stone, and festooned with 
green wreaths of clustering ivy ; village churches 
and prim school-houses : every object in the fair 
English prospect is steeped in a luminous haze, as 
the twilight shadows steal slowly upward from the 
dim recesses of shady woodland and winding lane, 
and every outline of the landscape darkens against 
the deepening crimson of the sky. 

Upon the broad facade of a mighty red-brick 
mansion^ built in the favourite style of the early 
Georgian era, the sinking sun lingers long, making 
gorgeous illumination. The long rows of narrow 
windows are all a-flame with the red light, and an 
honest homeward-tramping villager pauses once 
or twice in the roadway to glance across the 
smooth width of dewy lawn and tranquil lake, 
half fearful that there must be something more 
than natural in the glitter of those windows, and 
that maybe Maister Floyd's house is a-fire. 

The stately red-brick mansion belongs to Maister 
Floyd, as he is called in the honest patois of the 
Kentish rustics ; to Archibald Martin Floyd^ of the 



HOW A BICH BAKKEB MABBIED AX ACTBESS. S 

great bankmg-house of Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd, 
Lombard Street, City. 

The Kentish rustics know very little of this City 
banking-house, for Archibald Martin, the semoi 
partner, has long retired from any active share in 
the business, which is carried on entirely by his 
nephews, Andrew and Alexander Floyd, both 
steady, middle-aged men, with famiHes and 
country houses ; both owing their fortune to 
the rich imcle, who had found places in his 
counting-house for them some thirty years be- 
fore, when they were tall, raw-boned, sandy- 
haired, red-complexioned Scottish youths, fresh 
from some unpronounceable village north of 
Aberdeen. . 

The young gentlemen signed their names 
McFloyd when they first entered their uncle's 
counting-house ; but they very soon followed that 
wise relative's example, and dropped the formi- 
dable prefix, "We've nae need to tell these 
sootherran bodies that we're Scotche," Alick re- 
marked to his brother, as he wrote his name 
for the first time A. Floyd, all short. 

The Scottish banking-house had thriven wonder- 
fully in the hospitable English capital Unprece* 

B 2 



4 AURORA FLOYD. 

dented suocess had waited upon every enterprise 
undertaken by the old-established and respected 
firm of Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd. It had been 
Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd for upwards of a century ; 
for as one member of the house dropped off some 
greener branch shot out from the old tree; and 
there had never yet been any need to alter the 
treble repetition of the well-known name upon 
the brass plates that adorned the swinging ma- 
hogany doors of the banking-house. To this 
brass plate Archibald Martin Floyd pointed when, 
some thirty years before the August evening of 
which I write, he took his raw-boned nephews 
for the first time across the threshold of his 
house of business. 

" See there, boys," he said ; " look at the three 
names upon that brass plate. Tour uncle George 
is over fifty, and a bachelor,— that's the first name ; 
our first cousin, Steph^i Floyd, of Calcutta, is 
going to sell out of the business before long, — 
that's the second name; the third is mine, and 
I'm thirty-seven years of age, remember, boys, 
and not likely to make a fool of myself by 
marrying. Your names will be wanted by-and- 
by to fill the blanks; see that you keep them 



HOW A RICH BANKER HABBIED AN ACTRESS. 5 

bright in the jxiesji time ; for let so much as 
one speck rest upon them, and theyll never be 
fit for that brass plate." 

Perhaps the rugged Scottish youths took this 
lesson to heart, or perhaps honesty was a natural 
and inborn virtue in the house of Floyd. Be it as it 
might, neither Alick nor Andrew disgraced their 
ancestry ; and when Stephen Floyd, the East-Indian 
merchant, sold out, and Uncle George grew tir^ 
of business and took to building, as an elderly, 
bachelor-like hobby, the young men stepped into 
thieir relatives' shoes, and took the conduct of the 
business upon their broad northern shoulders. 
Upon one point only Archibald Martin Floyd 
had misled his nephews, and that point regarded 
himself. Ten years after his address to the young 
men, at the sober age of seven-and-forty, the 
banker not only made a fool of himself by 
marrying, but, if indeed such things are foolish, 
sank stai farther from the proud elevation of 
worldly wisdom, by falling desperately in love 
with a beautiful but penniless woman, whom he 
brought home with him after a business-tour 
through the manufacturing districts, and with 
but little ceremony introduced to his relationg 



6 AUEORA FLOYD. 

and the county &milies round his Eentiah estate 
as his newly-wedded wife. 

The whole affisdr was so sudden, that these very 
county families had scarcely recovered from their 
surprise at reading a certam paragraph in the 
left-hand column of the * Times/ annoimcing the 
marriage of " Archibald Martin Floyd, banker, of 
Lombard Street and Felden Woods, to Ehza, only 
surviving daughter of Captain Prodder," when the 
bridegroom's travelling carriage dashed past the 
Gothic lodge at his gates, along the avenue and 
imder the great stone portico at the side of the 
house, and Eliza Floyd entered the banker's man- 
sion, nodding good-naturedly to the bewildered 
servants, marshalled into the hall to receive their 
new mistress. 

The banker's wife was a tall young woman, of 
about thirty, with a dark complexion, and great 
flashing bfeck eyes that lit up a fece, which might 
otherwise have been unnoticeable, into the splen- 
dour of absolute beauty. 

Let the reader recall one of those faces, whose 
sole loveliness lies in the glorious light of a pair 
of magnificent eyes, and remember how far they 
sur{)ass all others in their power of fascination. 



HOW A BICH BANKER MARRTKD AN ACTRESS. 7 

The same amount of beauty frittered away upon a 

forehead, and delicate complexion, would make an 
ordinarily loyely woman ; but concentrated ia one 
nucleus, in the wondrous lustre of the eyes, it 
makes a diyinity, a Circe. You may meet the 
first any day of your life ; the second, once ia a 
lifetime. 

Mr. Floyd introduced his wife to the neighbour^ 
ing gentry at a dinner-party which he gave soon 
after the lady's arrival at Felden Woods, as his 
country seat was called ; and this ceremony very 
briefly despatched, he said no more about his 
choice either to his neighbours or his relations, 
who would have been very glad to hear how this 
unlooked-for marriage had come about, and who 
hinted the same to the happy bridegroom, but 
without effect. 

Of course this very reticence on the part of 
Archibald Floyd himself only set the thousand 
tongues of rumour more busily to work. Bound 
Beckenham and West Wickham, near which 
villages Felden Woods was situated, there was 
scarcely any one debased and degraded station of 
life from which Mrs, Floyd was not reported to haye 



8 . AUBOBA IXOTD* 

Cfprong. She had been afftctory-girl, and the sillj 
old banker had seen her in the streets of Man-* 
Chester, with a ooloured handkerchief on her head, 
a coral necklace round her throaty and shoeless 
and stockingless feet tramping in the nrnd: he 
had seen her thus, and had fiedlen incontinently in 
love with her, and offered to marry her there and 
then. She was an actress, and he had seen her 
en the Manchester stage ; nay, lower still, she was 
some poor performer, decked in dirty white mnslin, 
red-cotton yelyet, and spangles, who acted in a 
oanTas booth, with a pityM set of wanderii^ 
vagabonds and a learned pig. Sometimes they 
said she was an equestrian, and it was at Astley's, 
and not in the manufacturing districts, that the 
banker had first seen her ; nay, some there were, 
ready to swear that they thanselres had beheld 
her leaping through gilded hoops, and dancing 
the cachuca upon six bare-backed steeds, in that 
sawdustHstrewn arena. There were whispered 
rumours that were more cruel than these; ru- 
mours which I dare not even set down here, for 
the bus^ tongnes that dealt so mercilessly with the 
name and fame of Eliza Floyd were not unbarbed 
by malice. It may be that some c^ the ladies had 



HOW A RICH 9iLNK£B HABRIEP AN ACTRESS. 9 

personal reasons for their spite against the bride, 
and that many a waning beauty, in those pleasant 
Kentish mansions, had speculated upon the banker's 
income, and the advantages attendant upon a 
union with the owner of Felden Woods, 

The daring, disreputable creature, with not 
even beauty to recommend her, — ^for the Kentish 
damsels scrupulously ignored Eliza's wonderful 
eyes, and were sternly critical with her low fore- 
head, doubtful nose, and rather wide mouth, — ^the 
artful, designing minx, at the mature age of 
.nine^d-twenty, with her hair growing nearly 
down to her eye-brows, had contrived to secure to 
herself the hand and fortune of the richest man in 
Kent — the man who had been hitherto so im- 
pregnable to every assault from bright eyes and 
rosy lips, that the most indefatigable of manceuvring 
mothers had given him up in despair, and ceased to 
make visionary and Alnaschar-like arrangements of 
the furniture in Mr. Floyd's great red-brick palace. 

The female portion of the community wondered 
indignantly at the supineness of the two Scotch 
nephews, and the old bachelor brother, George 
Floyd. Why did not these people show a little 
spirit— institute a commission of lunacy, and shut 



10 AURORA FLOTD. 

their crazy relatiye in a madhouse ? He deserved 
it. 

The mined noblesse of the Faubourg St.-Gennain 
could not have abused a wealthy Bonapartist with 
more vigorous rancour than these people employed 
in their ceaseless babble about the banker's wife. 
Whatever she did was a new subject for criticism ; 
even at that first dinner-party, though Eliza had 
no more ventured to interfere ynih the arrange- 
ments of the man-cook and housekeeper than if 
she had been a visitor at Buckingham Palace, the 
angry guests found that everything had degene- 
rated since ^Hhat woman " had entered the house. 
They hated the successful adventuress, — ^hated her 
for her beautiful eyes and her gorgeous jewels, the 
extravagant gifts of an adoring husband, — ^hated 
her for her stately figure and graceful movements, 
which never betrayed the rumoured obscurity of 
her origin, — hated her, above all, for her insolence 
in not appearing in the least afraid of the lofty 
members of that new circle in which she found 
herself. 

If she had meekly eaten the ample dish of 
humble-pie which these county families were pre- 
pared to set before her, — ^if she had licked the 



HOW A RICH BANKER MARRIED AN ACTRESS. 11 

dust from their aristocratic shoes, courted their 
patronage, and submitted to be "taken up" by 
them, — ^they might perhaps in time have forgiven 
her. But she did none of this. If they called 
upon her, well and good; she was frankly and 
cheerfully glad to see them. They might find her 
in her gardening^loves, with rumpled hair and a 
watering-pot in her hands, busy amongst her con- 
servatories; and she would receive them as se- 
renely as if she had been bom in a palace, and ac- 
customed to homage from her very babyhood. Let 
them be as frigidly polite as they pleased, she was 
always easy, candid, gay, and good-natured. She 
would rattle away about her " dear old Archy," as 
she presumed to call her bene&ctor and huaband ; 
or she would show her guests some new picture 
he had bought, and would dare — ^the impudent, 
ignorant^ pretentious creature! — to talk about 
Art, as if all the high-sounding jargon with which 
they tried to crush her was as familiar to her 
as to a Eoyal Academician. When etiquette 
demanded her returning these stately visits, she 
would drive boldly up to her neighbours' doors in 
a tiny basket-carriage, drawn by one rough pony ; 
for it was a whim of this designing woman to 



12 AURORA FLOYD. 

sSeci simplicity in heir tastes^ and to abjure all 
display. She would take all the grandeur she met 
with as a thing of course, ;Bind chatter and laughi 
with her flaunting theatrical animation, much to 
the admiration of misguided young men, who 
could not see the high-bred charms of her de- 
tractors, but who were never tired of talking of 
Mrs. Floyd's jolly manner and glorious eyes. 

I wonder whether poor Eliza Floyd knew all 
or half the cruel things that were said of her ! I 
shrewdly suspect that she contrived somehow or 
other to hear them all, and that she rather 
enjoyed the fun. She had been used to a life 
of excitement, and Felden Woods might have 
seemed dull to her but for these ever fresh 
scandals. She took a malicious delight in the 
discomfiture of her enemies. 

" How badly they must have wanted you for a 
husband, Archy," she said, " when they hate me 
so ferociously! Poor portionless old maids, to 
think that I should snatch their prey from them ! 
I know they think it a hard thing that they can't 
have me hanged, for marrying a rich man." 

But the banker was so deeply wounded when 
his adored wife repeated to him the gossip which 



HOW A RICH BANKER MARRIED AN ACTRESS. 13 

she had heard from her maid, who was a stanch 
adherent to a kind, easy mistress, that Eliza ever 
afterwards withheld these reports from him. They 
amused her; but they stung him to the quick. 
Proud afid sensitiye, like almost all very honest 
and conscientious men, he could not endure that 
any creature should dare to befoul the name of 
the woman he loved so tenderly. What W6is the 
obscurity fiom which he had taken her to him? 
Is a star less bright because it shines on a gutter 
as weU as upon the purple bosom of ihe midnight 
sea? Is a virtuous and generous-hearted woman 
less worthy because you find her making a scanty 
I^'ving out of the only industry she can exercise ; 

and acting Juliet to an audience of factory-hands, 
who give threepence apiece for the privilege of 
admiring and applauding her ? 

Yes, the murder must out ; the malicious were 
not altogether wrong in their conjectures : Eliza 
Prodder was an actress ; and it was on the dirty 
boards of a second-rate theatre in Lancashire that 
the wealthy banker had first beheld her. Archi- 
bald Floyd nourished a traditional, passive, but 
sincere admiration for the British Drama. Yes, 
th^ British Drama; for he had lived in a day 



14 . AURORA FLOYD. 

when the drama was British, and when * George 
Barnwell' and *Jane Shore' were amongst the 
favourite works of art of a play-going public. 
How sad that we should have degenerated since 
those classic days, and that the graceful story of 
Milwood and her apprentice-admirer is now so 
rarely set before us 1 Imbued, therefore, with this 
admiration for the drama, Mr. Floyd, stopping 
for a night at this second-rate Lancashire town, 
dropped into the dusty boxes of the theatre to 
witness the performance of ^ Eomeo and Juliet ;' 
the heiress of the Capulets being represented by 
Miss Eliza Percival, alias Prodder. 

I do not believe that Miss Percival was a good 
actress, or that she would ever have become 
distinguished in her profession; but she had a 
deep melodious voice, which rolled out the words 
of her author in a certain rich though rather 
monotonous music, pleasant to hear; and upon 
the stage she was very beautiful to look at, for 
her fece lighted up the little theatre better than 
all the gas that the manager grudged to his 
scanty audiences. 

It was not the fashion in those days to make 
" sensation '\ dramas of Shakespeare's plays. 



HOW A RICH BANKER MARRTRD AN ACTRESS. 15 

There was no * Hamlet ' with the celebrated water- 
8cene> and the Danish prince taking a ^^ header" 
to save poor weak-witted Ophelia. In the little 
Lancashire theatre it wonld have been thought a 
terrible sin against aU canons of dramatic art^ had 
Othello or his Ancient attempted to sit down 
dnring any part of the solemn performance. The 
hope of Denmark was no long-robed Norseman 
with flowing flaxen hair, but an individual who 
wore a short rusty black, cotton-velvet garment^ 
shaped like a child's frock, and trimmed with 
bugles, which dropped off and were trodden upon 
at intervals throughout the performance. The 
simple actors held, that tragedy, to be tragedy, 
must be utterly imlike anything that had ever 
happened beneath the sun. And Eliza Frodder 
patiently trod the old and beaten track, far too 
good-natured, light-hearted, and easy-going a 
creature to attempt any foolish interference with 
the crookedness of the times, which she was not 
bom to set right. 

What can I say, then, about her performance 
of the impassioned Italian girl ? She wore white 
satin and spangles, the spangles sewn upon the 
dirty hem of her dress, in the firm belief, 



16 Assmomx wuniL 



to afl pofincnl acti i amenv that gyn^eB 
mm an antaintft to diriL She mas In^Jii]^ and 
taDai^ ia dbe wfait&^waaiied litde green^roofm tdie 
lajminiite befiae she mi on to Ae 9li^ to laail 
fir her mnidered kinoBiaa and her baaoHhed l0wec^ 
Tlwj tdl IB diat Maoeadf began to be Bida^^ 
at 4iiee o'doek in Ae afienioan, and tdial it ivaa 
da n g en u wift to if|KQadi or to wfemk to bin 
betaeen Ibat boor and Ae doae of the peEibnn- 
anee. So dangenaB^ indeed, that smdr none 
bnt the il ^i i n g and miigvided genldeman ndio 
onre metldie great tng^edian ina dut pooBage^ 
and g»ie biat ^Good monoa, ''Mar/^ wmM 

baie bad Idie tenneriij to attenqpt iL But Mn 
TleRi»l did »i lake lH>r p<rfb«»T«7<k«,>l}r 

lDl»«t; file L«M»d>i«. »1»« budhrpud far 
flie fhygcal irear and tear of eady nAfanailffi and 

kmg perfbnBanees; boar flieny fir tdial sental 
cxbawtkm cf Ibe trae artkt idiD lir^ in Idie 

dhaiadter be lefireaaiits? 

The ea@T-^fDiong: ronnedians wiib ivittDm ££01 
aeled nnade feiiemdlly icsnailkS; to eadbi o^lher cm 
their jnmnaiie ail^iir? in tloe inttenraJb^ ^£ ttbe nH^t 
T^Dfig*e&Jl <&e<mQrse*; s^pietzidDalteii] njxook ttlne mmnmsA 
ei w^ojt^'T iDi i[be btDnose in a]Qk£&L^£<e' HLniKi&esitiOia^ 



HOW A RICH BANKEB MARBIED AN ACTRESS. 17 

during the pauses of the scene ; and when 
Hamlet wanted Horatio down at the footlights to 
ask him if he " marked that," it was likely 
enough that the prince's confidant was up the 
stage telling Folonius of the shameful way in 
which his landlady stole the tea and sugar. 

It was noty therefore, Miss Percival's acting that 
£EU3cinated the banker. Archibald Floyd knew 
that she was as bad an actress as ever played the 
leading tragedy and comedy for five-and-twenty 
shillings a week. He had seen Miss O'Neil in 
that very character, and it moved him to a pity- 
ing smile as the lactory-hands applauded poor 
Eliza's poison scene. But for all this he fell in 
love with her. It was a repetition of the old story. 
It was Arthur Pendennis at the little Chatteris 
theatre bewitched and bewildered by Miss 
Fotheringay all over again. Only that instead of 
a fickle, .impressionable boy, it was a sober, 
steady-going business-man of seven-and-forty, who 
had never felt one thrill of emotion in looking on 
a woman's face until that night, — ^until that night, 
— and from that night the world only held for him 
ojie being, and life only had one object. He 
went the next evening, and the next ; and then 

VOL. L C 




18 AURORA FLOYD. 

contrived to scrape acquaintance with some of 
the actors at a tavern next the theatre. They 
sponged.upon him crueUy, these seedy comedians, 
and allowed him to pay for unlimited glasses of 
brandy-and-water, and flattered and cajoled him, 
and plucked out the heart of his mystery ; and 
then went back to Eliza Fercival, and told her 
that she had dropped into a good thing, for that 
an old chap with no end of money had faUen over 
head and ears in love with her, and that if she 
played her cards well, he would marry her to- 
morrow. They pointed him out to her through a 
hole in the green curtain, sitting almost alone in 
the shabby boxes, waiting for the play to begin, 
and for her black eyes to shine upon him once 
more. 

Eliza laughed at her conquest ; it was only one 
amongst many such, which had all ended alike, — 
leading to nothing better than the purchase of a 
box on her benefit night, or a bouquet left for her 
at the stage-door. She did not know the power of 
first love upon a man of seven-and-forty. Before 
the week was out, Archibald Floyd had made her 
a solemn offer of marriage. 

He had heard a great deal about her from her 



HOW A RICH BANKER KiJtRIED AN ACTRESS. 19 

fellow-perfonners, and had heard nothing but good. 
Temptations resisted ; insidious proffers of jewels 
and gewgaws indignantly declined ; graceful acts of 
gentle womanly charity done in secret ; independ- 
ence preserved through all poverty and trial ; — they 
told him a hundred stories of her goodness, that 
brought the blood to his foce with proud and gene- 
rous emotion. And she herself told him the simple 
history of her life: told him that she was the 
daughter of a merchantK^ptain caUed Prodder ; 
that she was bom at Liverpool ; that she remem- 
bered little of her father, who was almost always at 
J3ea — ^nor of a brother, three years older than her- 
self, who quarrelled with his father, the merchant- 
captain, and ran away, and was never heard of 
again — ^nor of her mother, who died when she, 
Eliza, was four years old. The rest was told in a 
few words. She wsus taken into the family of an 
aunt who kept a grocer's shop in Miss Prodder's 
native town. She learnt artificial flower-making, 
and did not take to the business. She went often 
to the Liverpool theatres, and thought she would 
like to go upon the stage. Being a daring and 
energetic young person, she left her aunt's house 
.one day, walked straight to the stage-manager of 

C 2 



20 AURORA FLOYD. 

one of the minor theatres, and asked him to let 
her appear as Lady Macbeth. The man laughed 
at her, but told her that» in consideiation of her 
fine figure and black eyes, he would give her fif- 
teen shillings a week to '^ walk on," as he techni- 
cally called the business of the ladies who wander 
on to the stage, sometimes dressed as yillagers, 
sometimes in court costume of calico trimmed with 
gold, and stare vaguely at whatever may be taking 
place in the scene. From ^'walking on," Eliza 
came to play minor parts, indignantly refused by 
her superiors ; from these she plunged ambitiously 
into the tragic lead, — and thus for nine years pur- 
sued the even tenour of her way ; until, close upon 
her nine-and-twentieth birthday, Fate threw the 
wealthy banker across her pathway, and in the 
parish church of a small town in the Potteries the 
black-eyed actress exchanged the name of Prodder 
for that of Floyd. 

She had accepted the rich man partly because, 
moved by a sentiment of gratitude for the gene- 
rous ardour of his affection, she was inclined to 
like him better than any one else she knew ; and 
partly in accordance with the advice of her thea- 
trical friends, who told her, with more candour 



HOW A BICH BANKEB MABRIED AN ACTRESS. 21 

than elegance, that she would be a jolly fool to let 
such a chance escape her; but at the time she 
gave her hand to Archibald Martin Floyd, she had 
no idea whatever of the magnitude of the fortime 
he had invited her to share. He told her that he 
was a banker, and her active mind immediately 
evoked the image of the only banker's wife she had 
ever known : a portly lady, who wore silk gowns, 
lived in a square stuccoed house with green blinds, 
kept a cook and housemaid, and took three box- 
tickets for Miss Fercival's benefit. 

When, therefore, the doting husband loaded his 
handsome bride with diamond bracelets and neck- 
laces, and with silks and brocades that were stiS 
and unmanageable from their very richness,— when 
he carried her straight from the Potteries to the 
Isle of Wight, and lodged her in spacious apart- 
ments at the best hotel in Eyde, and flung his 
money here and there, as if he had carried the 
lamp of Aladdin in his coat-pocket, — ^Eliza remon- 
strated with her new master, fearing that his love 
had driven him mad, and that this alarming extra- 
vagance was the first outburst of insanity. 

It seemed a repetition of the dear old Burleigh 
story when Archibald Floyd took his wife into the 



22 AtJBOBA HiOTD. 

long picture-gailerjr at Felden Woods. She clasped 
her hands for &ank womanly joy as she looked at 
the magnificence about her. She compared her- 
self to the humble bride of the earl, and feU 
on her knees and did theatrical homage to her 
lord. " Archy," she said, '* it is all too good for 
me ! I am afraid I shall die of my grandeur, as 
the poor girl pined away at Burleigh House." 

In the full maturity of womanly loveliness, rich 
in health, freshness, and high spirits, how little 
could Eliza dream that she would hold even a 
briefer lease of these costly splendours than the 
Bride of Burleigh had done before her I 

Now the reader, being acquainted with Eliza's 
antecedents, may perhaps find in them some clue 
to the insolent ease and well-bred audacity with 
which Mrs. Floyd treated the second-rate county 
fitmilies, who were bent upon putting her to con- 
fusion. She was an actress : for nine years she 
had lived in that ideal world in which dukes and 
marquises are as* common as butchers and bakers 
in work-a-day life ; in which, indeed, a nobleman is 
generally a poor mean-spirited individual, who gets 
the worst of it on every hand, and is contemptu- 
ously entreated by the audience on account of his 



HOW A RICH BANKER HARRIED AN ACTRESS. 23 

rank. How should she be abashed on entering the 
'drawing-rooms of these Kentish mansions^ when 
for nine years she had walked nightly on to a stage 
to be the focus of every eye, and to entertain her 
guests the evening through? Was it likely she 
was to be over-awed by the Lenfields, who were 
coachbuilders in Park Lane, or the Miss Manderlys, 
whose £a,ther had made his money by a patent for 
starch, — she, who had received King Duncan at the 
gates of her castle, and had sat on a rickety throno 
dispensing condescending hospitality to the obse- 
quious Thanes at Dunsinane ? So, do what they 
would, they were unable to subdue this base in- 
truder ; while, to itdd to their mortification, it every 
day became more obvious that Mr. and Mrs. Floyd 
made one of the happiest couples who had ever 
worn the bonds of matrimony, and changed them 
into garlands of roses. If this were a very romantic 
story, it would be perhaps only proper for Eliza 
Floyd to pine in her gilded bower, and misapply 
her energies in weeping for some abandoned lover, 
deserted in an evil hour of ambitious madness. 
But as my story is a true one, — ^not only true in a 
general sense, but strictly true as to the leading 
facts which I am about to relate, — and as I could 



^24 AURORA FLOTD. 

point out) in a certain connty, far northward of the 
lovely Kentish woods, the very house in which the 
events I shall describe took place, I am bound also 
to be truthful here, and to set down as a fetct that 
the love which Eliza Floyd bore for her husband 
was as pure and sincere an affection as ever man 
need hope to win from the generous heart of a 
good woman. What share gratitude may have 
had in that love, I cannot telL If she lived in a 
handsome house, and was waited on by attentive 
and deferential servants ;» if she ate of delicate 
dishes, and drank costly wines; if she wore rich 
dresses and splendid jewels, and lolled on the 
downy cushions of a carriage, drawn by high-met- 
tled horses, and driven by a coachman with pow- 
dered hair; i^ wherever she went, aU outward 
semblance of homage was paid to her ; if she had 
but to utter a wish, and, swift as the stroke of some 
enchanter's wand, that wish was gratified, — she 
knew that she owed aU to her husband, Archibald 
Floyd ; and it may be that she grew not unna- 
turally to associate him with every advantage she 
enjoyed, and to love him for the sake of these 
things. Such a love as this may appear a low 
and despicable affection when compared to the 



HOW A BICH BANKER HARRIED AN ACTRESS. 25 

noble sentiment entertained by the Nancys of 
modem romance for the Bill Sykeses of their 
choice ; and no doubt Eliza Floyd ought to have 
felt a soyereign contempt for the man who watched 
her every whim, who gratified her every caprice, 
and who loved and honoured her as much, cirdevant 
provincial actress though she was, as he could have 
done had she descended the steps of the loftiest 
throne in Christendom to give him her hand. 

She was gratefal to him, she loved him, and 
she made him perfectly happy ; so happy that the 
strong-hearted Scotchman was sometimes almost 
panic-stricken at the contemplation of his own 
prosperity, and would feU down on his knees and 
pray that this blessing might not be taken from 
him ; that> if it pleased Providence to afflict him, 
he might be stripped of every shilling of his wealth, 
and left penniless, to begin the world anew,— 
but with her. Alas, it was this blessing, of all 
others, that he was to lose ! 

For a year Eliza and her husband lived this 
happy life at Felden Woods. He wished to take 
her on the Continent, or to London for the sea- 
son ; but she could not bear to leave her lovely 
Kentish home. She was happier than the day 



26 AUBORA. FLOTB. 

was long amongst her gardens, and pineries^ and 
graperies, her d(^ and horses^ and her poor. To 
these last she seemed an angel, descended from 
the skies to comfort them. There were cottages 
from which the prim daughters of the second-rate 
eoonty fronilies fled, tract in hand, discomfited 
and abashed by the black looks of the half-staryed 
inmates; bnt npon whose doorways the shadow 
of Mrs. Floyd was as the shadow of a priest in 
a Catholic conntry — always sacred, yet ever wel- 
come and familiar. She had the trick of making 
^ese people like her before she set to work to re- 
form their evil habits. At an early stage of her ac- 
qnaintance with them, she was as bUnd to the dirt 
and disorder of their cottages as she woold hare been 
to a shabby carpet in the drawing-room of a poor 
dnchess ; bnt by-and-by she woold artfiiDy hint at 
this and that little improrement in the menage^ of 
her pensioners, until in less than a month, withont 
haying either lectured or offended, she had worked 
an entire transformation. Mrs. Floyd was fright- 
fully artful in her dealings with these erring 
peasants. Instead of telling them at once in a 
candid and Christian-like manner that they were 
all dirty, d^raded, ungrateful, and irreligious, die 



now A BICH BAKKEB MABBItB AN ACTBESS. 27 

diplomatized and finessed with them as if she had 
been canvassing the comity. She made the giris 
regular in their attendance at church by means of 
new bonnets and smartly bound prayer-books ; she 
kept married men out of the public-houses by bribes 
of tobacco to smoke at home, and once (oh, horror 1) 
by the gift of a bottle of gin for moderate and social 
consumption in the family 6ircle. She cured a dirty 
chimney-piece by the present of a gaudy china vase 
to its proprietress, and a slovenly hearth by means 
of a brass fender. She repaired a shrewish temper 
with a new gown, and patched up a family breach 
of long standing with a chintz waistcoat. But 
one brief year after her marriage, — while busy land- 
scape-gardeners were working at^ the improvements 

she had planned ; while the steady process of re- 
formation was slowly but surely progressing amongst 
the grateful recipients of her bounty ; while the 
eager tongues of her detractors were still waging 
war upon her fair fame ; while Archibald Floyd re- 
joiced as he held a baby-daughter in his arms, — 
without one forewarning symptom to break the force 
of the blow, the light slowly faded out of those glo- 
rious eyes, never to shine again on this side of eter- 
nity, and Archibald Martin Floyd was a widower. 



28 AUBORA. FLOTD. 



CHAPTEE IL ' 

AUBOBA. 

The chad which Eliza Floyd left behind her, 
when she was so suddenly taken away £rom all 
earthly piosperity and happiness, was christened 
Aurora. The romanticHSOunding name had been 
a Jbncy of poor Eliza's ; and there was no caprice 
of hers, however trifling, that had not always been 
sacred with her adoring husband, and that was not 
doubly sacred now. The actual intensity of the 
widower's grief was known to no creature in this 
lower world. His nephews and his nephews' wireB 
paid him pertinacious visits of condolence; nay, 
one of these nieces by marriage, a good motherly 
creature, devoted to her husband, insisted on seeing 
and comforting the stricken man. Heaven knows 
whether her tenderness did convey any comfort to 
that shipwrecked soul I She found him like a man 
who had suffered from a stroke of paralysis, tor- 




AUBORA. 2d 

pidy almost imbecile. Perhaps she took the wisest 
course that could possibly have been taken. She 
said little to him upon the subject of his affliction ; 
but visited him frequently, patiently sitting op- 
posite to him for hours at a time, he and she 
talking of all manner of easy conyentional topics, 
— ^the state of the country, the weather, a change 
in the ministry, and such subjects as were so iar 
remote from the grief of his life, that a less care- 
ful hand than Mrs. Alexander Floyd's could have 
scarcely touched upon the broken chords of that 
mined instrument, the widower's heart. 

It was not until six months after Eliza's death 
that Mrs. Alexander yentured to utter her name ; 
but when she did speak of her, it was with no 
solenm hesitation, but tenderly and familiarly, as 
if she had been accustomed to talk of the dead. 
She saw at once that she had done right. The 
time had come for the widower to feel relief in 
speaking of the lost one ; and from that hour Mrs. 
Alexander became a fevourite with her uncle. 
Tears after, he told her that, even in the sullen 
torpor of his griei^ he had had a dim consciousuess 
that she pitied him, and that she was ^' a good 
woman.'' This good woman came that very even- 



30 AURORA FLOYD. 

ing into the big room, where the banker sat hj 
his lonely hearth, with a baby in her arms, — ^a 
pale-faced chfld, with great wondering black eyes, 
which stared at the rich man in sombre astonish- 
ment ; a solemn-faced, ugly baby, which was to 
grow by-and-by into Aurora Floyd, the heroine of 
my story. 

That pale, black-eyed baby became henceforth 
the idol of Archibald Martin Floyd, the one object 
in aU this wide universe for which it seemed worth 
his while to endure life. From the day of his 
wife's death he had abandoned all active share in 
the Lombard-Street business, and he had now nei- 
ther occupation nor delight, save in waiting upon 
the prattlings and humouring the caprices of this 
in&nt daughter. His love for her was a weak- 
ness, almost verging upon a madness. Had his 
nephews been very designing men, they might 
perhaps have entertained some vague ideas of 
that commission of lunacy for which the out- 
raged neighbours were so anxious. He grudged 
the hired nurses their oflSces of love about the 
person of his child He watched them furtively, 
fearful lest they should be harsh with her. All 
the ponderous doors in the great house at Felden 



bt 



AURORA. SI 

Woods could not drown the feeblest murmur of 
that infant voice to those ever-anxious, loving ears. 
He watched her growth as a child watches an 
acorn it hopes to rear to an oak. He repeated 
her broken baby-syllables till people grew weary 
of his babble about the child. Of course the end 
of all this was, that, in the common acceptation 
of the term, Aurora was spoiled. We do not say 
a flower is spoiled because it is reared in a hot- 
house where no breath of heaven can visit it too 
roughly ; but then, certainly, the bright exotic is 
trimmed and pruned by the gardener's merciless 
hand, while Aurora shot whither she would, and 
there was none to lop the wandering brsmches of 
that luxuriant nature. She said what she pleetsed ; 
thought, spoke, acted as she pleased ; learned what 
she pleased ; and she grew into a bright impetuous 
being, afiectionate and generous-hearted as her 
mother, but with some touch of native fire blended 
in her mould that stamped her as original It is 
the common habit of ugly babies to grow into hand- 
some women, and so it was with Aurora Floyd. At 
seventeen she was twice as beautiful as her mother 
had been at nine-and-twenty, but with much the 
same irregular features, lighted up by a pair of eyes 



82 AURORA FLOTD. 

that were like the stars of heayen, and by two 
rows of peerlessly white teetL You rarely, in 
looking at her face, could get beyond these eyes 
and teeth; for they so dazzled and blinded you 
that they defied you to criticise the doubtful little 
nose, or the width of the smiling mouth. What if 
those masses of blue-black hair were brushed away 
ftom a forehead too low for the common standard 
of beauty P A phrenologist would have told you 
that the head was a noble one; and a sculptor 
would have added that it was set upon the throat 
of a Cleopatra. 

Miss Floyd knew very little of her poor mother's 
hktory« There was a picture in crayons hanging 
in tlio baiiker^s sanctum sanctorum which lepre- 
»^t«>d £Iiia in the foil flush of her beauty and 
pi^perity ; but the poitnit told nothing of the 
hktKxry of its original^ and Auioia had neT^ 
iK^aiH Kit ik^ merehanlHCtiiptun, the poor lir^^ 
|¥(>cl k>ii$ting> tk^ grim aunt who kepi a ehandlef ^s 
«h\>)s thi^ Mliiioial flovon^niaki]^ and the pn> 
viiKiU ;$l;i^$;«^ Ske had nox^eir be^n tcJd that her 
iMHilK^idl gfM>d&lh<er^$ ttauite ^ims Prctdki^, and 
ihAl W iivi>lh<c4' Wi j^xied Juliet to an aaiMikafece 
^ £iKHtH3ix hattJis^ i.^ the i!&K>^«rfttid aatd soootiedzDes 




AURORA. 33 

uncertain stipend of four-and-twopence a night. 
The county families accepted and made much of 
the rich banker's heiress ; but they were not slow 
to say that Aurora was her mother's own daughter, 
and had the taint of the play-acting and horse- 
riding, the spangles and the sawdust, strong in 
her nature. The truth of the matter is, that 
before Miss Floyd emerged from the nursery she 
eyinced a very decided tendency to become what 
is called ''fitst" At six years of age she rejected 
a doll, and asked for a rocking-horse. At ten 
she could converse fluently upon the subject of 
pointers, setters, fox-hounds, harriers, and beagles, 
though she drove her governess to the verge of 
despair by persistently forgetting under what 
Boman emperor Jerusalem was destroyed, and 
who was legate from the Pope at the time of 
Catherine of Arragon's divorce. At eleven she 
talked unreservedly of the horses in the Lenfield 
stables as a pack of screws ; at twelve she con- 
tributed her half-crown to a Derby sweepstakes 
amongst her £Ekther's servants, and triumphantly 
drew the winning horse ; and at thirteen she rode 
across country with her cousin Andrew, who was 
a member of the Croydon hunt. It was not with- 
VOL. I. D 



84 AUBOBA. FLOYD. 

oat grief tiiat the banker watched his daughter's 
progress in tiiese donbtfdl accomplishments ; but 
she was so beantifal, so frank and fearless, so 
generoos, affectiooate^ and tame, that he cotdd not 
bring himself to tell her that she was not all he 
could desire her to be. If he oonld have governed 
or directed that impetaoos natnie, he woold haye 
had her the most refined and el^ant^ the most 
perfect and accomplished of her sex ; bat he coald 
not do this, and he was bin to thank God for her 
as she was, and to indulge her eyery whinu 

Alexander Floyd's eldest daughter, Lucy, first 
cousin, once remoyed, to Aoroira, was that young 
lady's l^end and confidante, and came now and 
then from her fisUher's yilla at Fulham to spend a 
month at Felden Woods. But Lucy Floyd had 
half a dozen broth^» and sisters, and was brought 
up in a very different manner to the heiress. She 
was a fitir-fkoed, blue-eyed, rosy-lipped, golden- 
haired little girl, who thought Fddai Woods a 
paradise upon earth, and Aurora more fortunate 
than the Princess Boyal of England, or Titania, 
Queen of the Fairies. She was direfuUy afrakl of 
her cousin's ponies and Newfoundland doga^ and 
had a (firm oontictioii that sudden death held his 




AURORA. 35 

throne within a certain radius of a horse's heels ; 
but she loved and admired Aurora, after the 
manner common to these weaker natures, and 
accepted Miss Eloyd's superb patronage and pro- 
tection as a thing of course. 

The day came when some dark but undefined 
doud hovered about the narrow home-circle at 
Felden Woods. There was a coolness between 
the banker and his beloved child. The yoimg 
lady spent half her time on horseback, scorning 
the shady lanes round Beckenham^ attended only 
by her groom-a dashing young feUow, chosen 
by Mr. Floyd on account of his good looks for 
Aurora's especial service. She dined in her own 
room after these long, lonely rides, leaviug her 
&ther to eat his solitary meal in the vast dining- 
room, which seemed to be fully occupied when 
she sat in it, and desolately empty without her. 
The household at Felden Woods long remem- 
bered one particular June evening on which 
the storm burst forth between the father and 
daughter. 

Aurora had been absent &om two o'clock in the 
afternoon until sunset, and the banker paced 
the long stone terrace with his watch in his hand, 

J> 2 




36 AUROBA FLOYD. 

the figures on the dial-plate barely distinguish- 
able in the twilight, waiting for his daughter's 
coming home. He had sent his dinner away- 
untouched; his newspapers lay uncut upon the 
table, and the household spies, we call servants, 
told each other how his hand had shaken so 
violently that he had spilled half a decanter of 
wine over the polished mahogany in attempting 
to fill his glass. The housekeeper and her satel- 
lites crept into the hall, and looked through the 
half-glass doors at the anxious watcher on the 
terrace. The men in the stables talked of " the 
row," as they called this terrible breach between 
father and chUd ; ajid when at last horses' hoofs 
were heard in the long avenue, and Miss Floyd 
reined in her thorough-bred chestnut at the foot 
of the terrace-steps, there was a lurking audience 
hidden here and there in the evening shadow, 
eager to hear and see. 

But there was very little to gratify these prying 
eyes and ears, Aurora sprang lightly to the 
ground before the groom could dismount to assist 
her, and the chestnut, with heaving and foam- 
flecked sides, was led off to the stable. 

Mr. Floyd watched the groom and the two 



AURORA. 37 

horses as they disappeared through the great 
gates leading to the stable-yard, and then said 
very quietly, "You don't use that animal well, 
Aurora. A six hours* ride is neither good for her 
nor for you. Tour groom should have known 
better than to allow it." He led the way into his 
study, telling his daughter to follow him, and they 
were closeted together for upwards of an hour. 

Early the next morning Miss Floyd's governess 
departed from Felden Woods, and between break- 
fast and luncheon the banker paid a visit to the 
stables, an4 examined his daughter's favourite 
chestnut mare, a beautiful filly all bone and 
muscle, that had been trained for a racer. The 
animal had strained a sinew, and walked lame. 
Mr. Floyd sent for his daughter's groom, and 
paid and dismissed him on the spot. The young 
fellow made no remonstrance, but went quietly to his 
quarters, took off his livery, packed a carpet-bag, 
and walked away from the house without bidding 
good-bye to his fellow-servants, who resented the 
afiront, and pronounced him a surly brute who 
had always been too high for this business. 

Three days after this, upon the 14th of June, 
1856, Mr. Floyd and his daughter left Felden 



88 AURORA FLOYD. 

Woods for Paris, where Anrorawas placed at a 
very expensive and exclusive Protestant finisliing 
school, kept by the Demoiselles Lespard, in a 
stately mansion entre eour et jardin in the Eue 
Saint-Dominique, there to complete her very im- 
perfect education. 

For a year and two months Miss Floyd has 
been away at this Parisian finishing school ; it is 
late in tlio August of 1857, and again the banker 
walks upon the long stone terrace in front of the 
um^row windo\T8 of his red-brick mansion, this 
time \Yaiting for Aurora*s arrival from Paris. The 
scvrvauts have expressed considerable wonder at 
his not crossing the Channel to fetch his daughter, 
mul thoy think the dignity of the house some- 
what lowennl by Miss Floyd travelling unat- 

** A jXKwr dear young thing; that knows no more 
of thi» wK^ke»d wcorM than a blessed babr*** said 
tht> hvHV^kte»<^per> ^all alv>n€» amoxtgst a pack of 
ittvnx^tachioed FifHH"iin»*n T 

Aivhil>^d ]lartin Ftovd had grown an old maii 
iu v>ju<^ vtay — ^t tt?mN^ ami unexpi^cted day of 
1^ wifeV diesiilh; Urt ^Yva th^^ gmf of tbit 
Wr^^v^uaimi Kad sc«rvvhr ;s«<»m^ to allect hini so 



JLUROBA. S9 

strongly as ihe^loss'of his daughter Aurora during 
the fourteen months of her absence from Felden 
Woods. 

Perhaps it vtbs that at sixty-five years of age he 
uras less able to bear eyen a lesser grief; but those 
who watched him closely, declared that he seemed 
as much dejected by his daughter's absence as he 
could weU have been by her death. Even now, 
that he paces up and down the broad terrace, with 
the landscape stretching wide before him, and melt* 
ing vaguely away under that veil of crimson gl<Hy 
shed upon all things by the sinking sun; even 
now that he hourly, nay, ahnost momentarily, ex- 
pects to clasp his only child in his arms, Archibald 
Floyd seems rather nervously anxious than joyfully 
expectant 

He looks again and again at his watch, and 
pauses in his walk to listen to Beckenham church 
ch)ck striking eight; his ears are pretematurally 
alert to every sound, and give him instant warning 
of carriage-wheels far off upon the wide high-road. 
All the agitation and anxiety he has felt for the 
last week has been less than the concentrated 
fever of this moment. Will it pass on, that car- 
riage, or stop at the lodge-gates ? Surely his heart 



40 AURORA FLOYD. 

could never beat so loud save by some wondrous 
magnetism of fatherly love and hope. The car- 
riage stops. He hears the clanking of the gates ; 
the crimson-tinted landscape grows dim and blurred 
before his eyes, and he knows no more till a pair 
of impetuous arms are twined about his neck, and 
Aurora's face is hidden on his shoulder. 

It was a paltry hired carriage which Miss Floyd 
arrived in, and it drove away as soon as she had 
alighted, and the small amount of luggage she 
brought had been handed to the eager servants. 
The banker led his child into the study, where 
they had held that long conference fourteen 
months before. A lamp burned upon the library 
table, and it was to this light that Archibald 
Floyd led his daughter. 

A year had changed the girl to a woman — a 
woman with great hollow black eyes, and pale 
haggard cheeks. The course of study at the 
Parisian finishing school had evidently been too 
hard for the spoiled heiress. 

" Aurora, Aurora," the old man cried piteously, 
** how ill you look ! how altered ! how " 

She laid her hand lightly yet imperiously upon 
his lips. 



AURORA. 41 

"Don't speak of me,'* she said, **I shall re- 
cover; but you — you, father — you too are 
changed." 

She was as taU as her &ther, and, resting her 
hands upon his shoulders, she looked at him long 
and earnestly. As she looked, the tears welled 
slowly up to her eyes which had been dry before, 
and poured silently down her haggard cheeks. 

" My fether, my devoted father," she said in a 
broken voice, "if my heart was made of adamant, 
I think it might break when I see the change in 
this beloved face." 

The old man checked her with a nervous gesture, 
a gesture almost of terror. 

" Not one word, not one word, Aurora," he said 
hurriedly ; " at least, only one. That person — ^he 
is dead?" 

"He is." 



42 AURORA FLOYD. 



CHAPTEB m. 

WHAT BECAME OF THE DIAMOND BRACELET. 

Aurora's lelatiyes were not alow to exclaim 
upon the change for the woise which a twelye- 
month in Paris had made in their yomig kins- 
woman. I fear that the Demoiselles Lespaid 
sofifered considerably in reputation amongst the 
drele round Felden Woods from Miss Floyd's im- 
paired good looks. She was out of qpirits too, had 
no appetite, dq>t badly, was nerrous and hys- 
terical, no longer took any interest in her dc^ 
and horses, and was altogether an altered creature. 
Mrs. Alexander Floyd declared it was perfectly 
clear that these cruel Frenchwomen had worked 
poor Aurora to a shadow : the girl was not used to 
study, she said ; she had been accustomed to exer- 
cise and open air, and no doubt had pined sadly in 
the dose atmosj^ere of a schoolroom. 

But Aurora's was one of those impressionable 



WHAT BEOAHS OF THE DIAMOND BRACELET. 43 

natures which qnidly recover from any depressing 
influence. Early in September Lucy Floyd came 
to Felden Woods, and found her handsome cousin 
almost entirely recorered from the drudgery of the 
Parisian penmen, but still yery loth to talk much 
of that seminary. She answered Lucy's eager 
questions yery purtly; said that she hated the 
Demoiselles Lespard and the Bue Saint-Dominique, 
and that the yery memory of Paris was disagree- 
able to her. Like most young ladies with black 
eyes and blue-black hair, Miss Floyd was a good 
hater ; so Lucy forbore to ask for more informa- 
tion upon what was so evidently an unpleasant 
subject to her cousin. Poor Lucy had been merci- 
lessly well educated; she spoke half a dozen 
languages, knew aU about the natural sciences, 
had read Gibbon, Niebuhr, and Arnold, from the 
title*page to the printer s name, and looked upon 
tilie heiress as a big brilliant dunce ; so she quietly 
set down Aurora's dislike to Paris to that young 
lady's distaste for tuition, and thought little more 
about it. Any other reasons for Miss Floyd's almost 
shuddering horror of her Parisian associations lay 
&r beyond Lacy's simple power of penetration. . 
The fifteenth of September was Aurora's births 



44 AURORA FLOYD. 

dayj and Archibald Floyd determined upon thiS| 
the nineteenth anniveraary of his daughter's first 
appearance on thia mortal scene, to give an enteiv 
taimnenti whereat his county neighbours and town 
acquaintance might alike behold and admire the 
beautiM heiress. 

Mrs. Alescander came to Felden Woods to super- 
intend the preparations for this birthday balL 
8he drove Aurora and Lucy into town to order the 
supper and the band» and to choose dresses and 
wreaths fi>r the young ladies. The banker s heiress 
was sadly out of place in a milliner's ^wioom ; 
but she had that rapid Judgment as to colour, and 
that perfect taste in form» which bespeak the soul 
of an artist; and while poor mild Lucy was giving 
endless trouble, and tumbling innumerable boxes 
of flowers^ betbre she could find any head-dress in 
harmony with her rosy cheeks and golden hair^ 
Aurora^ alter one bcief glance at the ha^tp a rt e rre a 
of (>aiuted cambric, pounced upon a crown^^is^ied 
garland of vivid scarlet berries> with drooping and 
tangled leaves of dark shining green, that looked 
as if they had been just plucked from a nmning 
sueamlet. She watched Lucy s perplexities with 
a haIf<ompas^onate, baI£<x)ntemptuous smile. 



WHAT BECAME OF THE DIAMOND BRACELET. 45 

**Look at that poor bewildered child," she 
said; "I know that she would like to put pink 
and yellow against her golden hair. Why, you 
silly Lucy, don't you know that yours is the beauty 
which really does not want adornment? A few 
pearls or forget-me-not blossoms, or a crown of 
water-lilies and a cloud of white areophane, would 
make you look a sylphide ; but I dare say you 
would like to wear amber satin and cabbage-roses.** 

From the milliner's they drove to Mr. Gunter's 
in Berkeley Square, at which world-renowned 
establishment Mrs. Alexander commanded those 
preparations of turkeys preserved in jelly, hams 
cunningly embalmed in rich wines and broths, and 

other specimens of that sublime art of confectionery 
which hovers midway between sleight-of-hand and 

cookery, and in which the Berkeley Square pro^ 
fessor is without a rival. When poor Thomas 
Babington Macaulay*s New-Zealander shall come 
to ponder over the ruins of St. Paul's, perhaps he 
will visit the remains of this humbler temple in 
Berkeley Square, and wonder at the ice-pails and 
jelly-moulds, the refiigerators and stewpans, the 
hot plates long cold and unheeded, and all the 
mysterious paraphernalia of the dead art 



46 AUBOBA FLOYD. 

From the West End Mrs. Alexander drove to 
CSiaring Cross ; she had a commission to execute 
at Dent's, — ^the purchase of a watch for one of her 
boys, who was just off to Eton. 

Aurora threw herself wearily back in the carriage 
while Mrs. Alexander and Lucy stopped at the 
watchmaker's. It was to be observed that, although 
Miss Floyd had recovered much of herold brilliancy 
and gaiety of temper, a certain gloomy shade would 
sometimes steal over her countenance when she 
was left to herself for a few minutes ; a darkly 
reflective expression quite foreign to her face. 
This shadow fell upon her beauty now as she 
looked out of the open window, moodily watching 
the passers-by. Mrs. Alexander was a long time 
making her purchase ; and Aurora had eat nearly 
aquarterofanhourblanklystaring at the shift, 
ing figures in the crowd, when a man hurrying by 
was attracted by her face at the carriage window, 
and started, as if at some great surprise. He 
passed on, however, and walked rapidly towards 
the Horse Guards ; but before he turned the comer, 
came to a dead stop, stood still for two or three 
minutes scratching the back of his head reflect- 
ively with his big, bare hand, and then walked 



WHAT BECAME OF THE DIAIIOND BRACELET. 47 

filowly^back towards Mr. Dent's emporium. He 
was a broadHshouldered, bull-necked, sandy-whii- 
kered fellow, wearing a cut-away coat and a gaudy 
neckerchief, and smoking a huge cigar, the rank 
fumes of which struggled with a very powerfid 
odour of rum-and-water recently imbibed. This 
gentleman's standing in society was betrayed by 
tiiQ smooth head of a bull-terrier, whose round 
eyes peeped out of the pocket of his cut-away 
ooat, and by a Blenheim spaniel carried under his 
arm. He was the yery last person, amongst all 
the souls between Cockspur Street and the statue 
of King Charles, who seemed likely to have any- 
thing to say to Miss Aurora Floyd ; nevertheless 
he walked deliberately up to the carriage, and, 
planting his elbows upon the door, nodded to her 
with fiieudly familiarity. 

** Well," he said, without inconveniencing him- 
self by the removal of the rank cigar, " how do ?" 

After which brief salutation he relapsed into 
silence, and roUed his great brown eyes slowly 
here and there, in contemplative examination of 
Miss Floyd and the vehicle in which she sat ; even 
carrying his powers of observation so far as to 
take particular notice of a plethoric morocco-bag 




48 AURORA FLOYD. 

lying on the back seat, and to inquire casually 
whether there was ^ anythink wallable in the old 
party's redicule ?" 

But Aurora did not allow him long for this 
leisurely employment; for looking at him with 
her eyes flashing forked lightnings of womanly 
fury, and her face crimson with indignation, she 
asked him in a sharp spasmodic tone whether he 
had anything to say to her. 

He had a great deal to say to her ; but as he 
put his head in ai the carriage window and made 
his communication, whatever it might be, in a 
rum-and-watery whisper, it reached no ears but 
those of Aurora herself. When he had done 
whispering, he took a greasy leather-coyered 
account-book, and a short stump of lead-pencil, 
considerably the worse for chewing, from his breast 
pocket, and wrote two or three lines upon a leaf, 
which he tore out and handed to Aurora. " This 
is the address," he said; "you won't forget to 
send?" 

She shook her head, and looked away from him 
-looked away with an irrepressible gesture of 
disgust and loathing. 

** You wouldn't like to buy a spannel dawg," 



WHAT BECAME OP THE DIAMOND BRACEI^T. 49 . 

said the man, holding the sleek, curly, black-and- 
tan animal up to the carriage window ; "of a . 
French poodle what'U balance a bit of bread on 
his nose while you count ten ? Hay ? You should 
have 'em a bargain — say fifteen pound the two." 

"No!" 

At this moment Mrs. Alexander emerged from 
the watchmaker's^ just in time to catch a glimpse 
of the man's broad shoulders as he moved sulkily 
away from the carriage. 

" Has that person been begging of you, Aurora ?" 
she asked, as they drove off. 

"No. I once bought a dog of him, and he 
recognized me." 

" And wanted you to buy one to-day?" 

"Yes." 

* • 

Miss Floyd sat gloomily silent during the whole 
of the homeward drive, looking out of the carriage 
window, and not deigning to take any notice 
whatever of her aunt and cousin. I do not know 
whether it was in submission to that palpable 
superiority of force and vitality in Aurora's nature 
which seemed to set her above her fellows, oc. 
simply in that inherent spirit of toadyism common, 
to the best of us; but Mrs. Alexander and her 

VOL. I. E 



50 AURORA FLOYD. 

fair-haired danghter always paid mute reverence 
to the banker's heiress, and were silent when it 
pleased her, or conversed at her royal will. I 
verily believe that it was Aurora's eyes rather 
than Archibald Martin Floyd's thousands which 
overawed all her kinsfolk ; and that if she had 
been a street-sweeper dressed in rags, and begging 
for hal^ence, people would have feared her and 
made way for her, and bated their breath when 
she was angry. 

The trees in the long avenue of Felden Woods 
were hung with sparkling coloured lamps, to 
light the guests who came to Aurora's birthday 
festival. The long range of windows on the 
ground-floor was ablaze with light ; the crash of 
the band burst every now and then above the 
perpetual roll of carriage wheels and the shouted 
repetition of visitors* names, and pealed across the 
silent woods: through the long vista of half a 
dozen rooms opening one into another, the waters 
of a fountain, sparkling vrfth a hundred hues in 
the light, glittered amid the dark floral wealth of 
a conservatory filled with exotics. Great clusters 
of tropical plants were grouped in the spacious 
hall ; festoons of flowers hung about the vapoury- 




• WHAT BECAME OF THDE DIAMOND BRACELET. 51 

cnrtains in the arched doorways. Light and 
splendour were everywhere around; and amid 
all, and more splendid than all, in the dark 
grandeur of her beauty, Aurora Floyd, crowned 
with scarlet, and robed in white, stood by her 
&ther's side. 

Amongst the guests who arrive latest at Mr. 
Floyd's ball are two officers from Windsor, who 
have driven across country in a mail-phaeton* 
The elder of these two, and the driver of the 
vehicle, has been very discontented and dis- 
agreeable throughout the journey. 

<* If rd had the remotest idea of the distance, 
Maldon," he said, "Td have seen you and your 
Kentish banker very considerably inconvenienced 
before I would have consented to victimize my 
horses for the sake of this snobbish party." 

" But it won't be a snobbish party," answered 
the yoimg man impetuously. " Archibald Floyd 
is ibe best fellow in Christendom, and as for his. 
daughter --" 

" Oh, of course, a divinity, with fifty thousand 
pounds for her fortune; all of which will no 
doubt be very tightly settled upon herself if she 
18 ever allowed to marry a penniless scap^race 

X 2 



52 AURORA FLOYD. 

like Francis Lewis Maiden, of Her Majesty's 11th 
Hussars. However, I don't want to stand in your 
way, my boy. Go in and win, and my blessing be 
upon your virtuous endeavours. I can imagine 
the young Scotchwoman — red hair (of course 
youll call it auburn), large feet, and jfreckles !" 

" Aurora Floyd — ^red hair and freckles !" The 
young officer laughed aloud at the stupendous 
joke. " You'll see her in a quarter of an hour, 
Bulstrode," he said. 

• Talbot Bulstrode, Captain of her Majesty's llth 
Hussars, had consented to drive his brother-officer 
from Windsor to Beckenham, and to array 
himself in his uniform, in order to adorn there- 
with the festival at Felden Woods, chiefly because, 
having at two-and-thirty years of age run through 
aU the wealth of life's excitements and amuse- 
ments, and finding himseK a penniless spendthrift 
in this species of coin, though well enough oflf for 
mere sordid riches, he was too tired of himself 
and the world to care much whither his friends 
and comrades led him. He was the eldest son of 
a wealthy Cornish baronet, whose ancestor had 
received his title straight from the hands of 
Scottish King James, when baronetcies first came^ 



WHAT BECAME OF THE DIAMOND BRACELET. 53 

into fashion; the same fortunate ancestor being 
near akin to a certain noble, erratic, unfortunate, 
and injured gentleman called Walter Ealeigh, and 
by no means too well used by the same Scottish 
James. Now of all the pride which ever 'swelled 
the breasts of mankind, the pride of Conushmen 
is perhaps the strongest; and the Bulstrode 
&mily was one of the proudest in ComwalL 
jTalbot was no alien son of this haughty house ; 
jGrom his very babyhood he had been the proudest 
of mankind. This pride had been the saving 
;power that had presided over his prosperous 
career. Other men might have made a downhill 
joad of that smooth pathway which wealth and 
grandeur made so pleasant; but not Talbot 
Bulstrode. The vices and follies of the common 
herd were perhaps retrievable, but vice or foUy^in 
a Bulstrode would have left a blot upon a hitherto 
unblemished escutcheon never .to be erased by 
time or tears. That pride of birth, which was 
Utterly unallied to pride of wealth or station, had 
'a certain noble and chivalrous side, and Talbot 
Bulstrode was beloved by many a parvenu whom 
meaner men would have insulted. In the ordi* 
joary affiiirs of life he was as humble as a woman 



64 AUBORA iXOTIX 

pr a cliild; it was only when Honour was in 
qaestion that the sleeping dragon of pride which 
had guarded the golden apples of his youth, 
parity^ probity, and truth, awdke and bade 
defiance to the enemy. At two-and-thirty he 
was still a badielor, not because he had never 
loved, but because he had never met with a 
woman whose stainless purity of soul fitted her in 
his eyes to become the mother of a noble race, 
and to rear sons who diould do honour to the 
name of Bulstrode. He looked for more than 
ordinary every-day virtue in the woman of his 
choice; he demanded those grand and queenly 
qualities which are rarest in womankind. Fear- 
less truth, a sense of honour keen as his own, 
loyalty of purpose, unselfishness, a soul untainted 
by the petty basenesses of daily life, — all these he 
sought in the being he loved; and at the first 
warning thrill [oi emotion caused by a pair of 
beautiful eyes, he grew critical and captious abotft 
Iheir owner, and began to look for infinitesimal 
stains upon tiie shining robe of her virginity. H^ 
would have married a beggar's daughter if she 
had reached his almost impossible standard ; he 
would have rejected the descendant of a race of 



WHAT BECAME OF THE DIAMOND BRACELET. 55 

kings if she had fallen one decimal -part of an 
inch below it Women feared Talbot Bulstrode ; 
manoeuvring mothers shrank abashed from the 
cold light of those watchful gray eyes ; daughters 
to marry blushed and trembled, and felt their 
pretty affectations, their ball-room properties, 
drop away from them under the quiet gaze of the 
young .officer ; till from fearing him, the lovely 
flutterers grew to shun and dislike him, and to 
leave Bulstrode Castle and the Bulstrode fortune 
unangled^for in the great matrimonial fisheries. 
So at two-and-thirty Talbot walked serenely safe 
amid the meshes and pitfalls of Belgravia, secure 
in the popular belief, that Captain Bulstrode of 
the 11th Hussars was not a marrying man. This 
belief was perhaps strengthened by the fact that 
the Cornishman was by no means the elegant 
ignoramus whose sole acccmiplishments ^consist in 
parting his hair, waxing his moustaches, and 
smoking a meerschaum that has been coloured by 
his valet, and who has become the accepted type 
of the military man in time of peace. 

Talbot Bulstrode was fond of scientific pursuits ; 
he neither smoked, drank, nor gambled. He had 
only been to the Derby once in his life, and on that 



66 AURORA FLOYD. 

one occafflon had walked quietly away from the 
Stand while the great race was being run, and the 
white faces were turned towards the fatal Comer, 
and men were sick with terror and anxiety, and 
frenzied with the madness of suspense. He never 
hunted, though he rode as well as Mr. Assheton 
Smith. He was a perfect swordsman, and one of 
Mr. Angelo's pet pupils ; but he had never handled 
a billiard-cue in his life, nor had he touched a card 
since the days of his boyhood, when he took a hand 
at long whist with his father and mother and the 
parson of the parish, in the south drawing-room at 
Bulstrode Castle. He had a peculiar aversion to all 
games of chance and skill, contending that it was be- 
neath a gentleman to employ, even for amuse- 
ment, the implements of the sharper's pitiful trade. 
His rooms were as neatly kept as those of a woman. 
Cases of mathematical instruments took the place 
of cigar-boxes; proof impressions of Eaphael 
•adorned the walls ordinarily covered with French 
prints and water-coloured sporting-sketches from 
Ackermann's emporium. He was familiar with 
every turn of expression in Descartes and CondiUac, 
but would have been sorely puzzled to translate 
the argotic locutions of Monsieur de Kock,pire. 



WHAT BECAME OP THB DIAMOND BBACfitET. «7 

Those who spoke of him summed him up by saying 
that he wasn't a bit like an officer ; but there was 
a certain cavalry regiment, which he had com- 
manded when a memorable and most desperate 
charge was made against a bristling wall of Eus- 
sian cannon, whose Toxiks told another story of 
Captain Bulstrode. He had made an exchange 
into the 11th Hussars on his return from the 
Crimea, whence, among other distinctions, he had 
"brought a stiff leg, which for a time disqualified 
him from dancing. It was from pure benevolence, 
therefore, or from that indifference to all things 
which is easily mistaken for unselfishness, that 
Talbot Bulstrode* had consented to accept an in- 
vitation to the ball at Felden Woods. 

The banker's guests were not of that charmed 
circle familiar to the captain of Hussars ; so Tal- 
bot, after a brief introduction to his host, fell back 
among the crowd assembled in one of the doorways, 
^nd quietly watched the dancers ; not unobserved 
himself, however, for he was just one of those peo- 
ple who will not pass in a crowd. Tall and broad- 
-chested, with a pale whiskerless face, aquiline nose, 
clear, cold, gray eyes, thick moustache, and black 
hair, worn bs closely cropped as if he had lately 



68 AUBOEA FLOYa 

emerged from Coldbaih Fields or Millbank prison^ 
lie formed a striking contrast to the yeUow-whia^ 
kered yoimg comet who had accompanied him* 
Even that stiff leg, which in others might have 
seemed a blemish^ added to the distinction of his 
appearance, and, coupled with the glittering orders 
on the breast of his uniform, told of deeds of prow- 
ess lately done. He took very little delight in the 
gay assembly revdying before him to one of Charles 
d' Albert's waltzes. He had heard the same music 
before, executed by the same band; the faces, 
though mibmiliar to him, were not new: dark 
beauties in pink, fair beauties in blue ; tall dash- 
ing beauties in srlks, and laces, and jewels, and 
splendour; modestly downcast beauties in white 
crape and rose-buds. They had all been spread 
for him, those feimiliar nets of gauze and areophane, 
and he had escaped them all ; and the name of 
Bulstrode might drop out of the history of Cornish 
gentry to find no record save upon gravestcmes, 
but it would never be tarnished by an unworthy 
race, or dragged through the mire of a divorce 
court by a guilty woman. While he lounged 
against the pillar of a doorway, leeming on his cane, 
and resting his lame leg, and wondering lazily 



WHAT BECAUE OF THE DIAMOND BBACELET. 59 

whether there was anything npon eartii that 
repaid a man for the trouble of living, Comet 
Maldon approached him with a wcnnan's gloved 
hand lying lightly on , his arm, and a divinity 
walking by his side. A divinity! imperiously 
beautiful in white and scarlet, painfully das^ling 
to look upon, intoxicatingly brilliant to behol3. 
Captain Bulstrode had served in India, and had 
«nce tasted a horrible spirit called bang, which 
made the men who drank it half mad ; and he 
could not help fancying that the beauty of this 
woman was like the strength of that alcoholic 
preparation; barbarous, intoxicating, dangerous, 
and maddening. 

His brother-officer presented him to this wonder- 
ful creature, and he found that her earthly name 
was Aurora Floyd, and that she was the heiress of 
Felden Woods. *.: 

Talbot Bulstrode recovered himself in a moment. 
This imperious creature, this Cleopatra in crino^ 
line, had a low forehead, a nose that deviated from 
the line of beauty, and a wide mouth. What was 
4lie but another tr^ set in white muslin, airi 
baited with artificial flowers, like the rest ? She 
was to have fifty thousand pounds for h^ porticu^ 



60 AURORA FLOYa 

80 she didn't want a rich husband; but she was a 
nobody, so of course she wanted position, and had 
no doubt read up the Baleigh Bolstrodes in the 
sablime pages of Burke. The clear gray eyes 
grew cold as ever, th^^fore, as Talbot bowed to 
the heiress. Mr. M aldon found his partner a chair 
dose to the pillar against which Captain Buktrode 
had taken his stand, and Mrs. Alexander Floyd 
swooping down upon the comet at this very mo- 
ment, with the dire intent of carrying him off to 
dance with a lady who executed more of her steps 
upon the toes of her partner than on the floor of 
&.e baU-roonit Aurora and Talbot were left to them- 
selves. 

Captain Bulstrode glanced downward at the 
banker's daughter. His gaze lingered upon the 
graceful head, with its ooronal of shining scarlet 
berries, encircling smooth masses of blue-Uack 
hair. He expected to see the modest drooping of 
the eyelkb peculiar to young ladies with long 
lashes, but he was disappointed ; for Aurora Floyd 
was looking straight before her, neither at him, 
nor at the lights, nor the flowers, nor the dancers, 
but far away into vacancy. She was so young, 
prosperous, admired, and beloved, that it was diffi- 



WHAT BECAME OF THE DUMOND BRACELET. Qt 

cult to account for the dim sliadow of trouble that 
clouded her glorious eyes. 

While he was wondering what he should say ta 
her, she lifted her eyes to his face, and asked him 
the strangest question he had ever heard from 
girlish lips. 

"Do you know if Thunderbolt won the Leger P"' 
she asked. 

He was too much confounded to answer for a 
moment, and she continued rather impatiently, 
" They must have heard by six o'clock this even- 
ing in London ; but I have asked half a dozen: 
people here to-night, and no one seems to know 
anything about it." 

Talbot's close-cropped hair seemed lifted from- 
his head as he listened to this terrible address* 
Good heavens! what a horrible woman! The* 
hussar's vivid imagination pictured the heir of all 
the Baleigh Bulstrodes receiving his infantine 
impressions from such a mother* She would teach 
him to read out of the *Eacing Calendar;' she 
would invent a royal alphabet of the turf, and tell 
him. that " D stands for Derby, old England's great 
race," and " E stands for Epsom, a crack meetings 
place," &c. . He told Miss Floyd that he had never 



6l2 AimORA FLOYD. 

been to Donoaster in his life, that he had never 
read a sportmg-paper, and that he knew no more 
of Thunderbolt than of King Cheops. 

She looked at him rather contemptuously. 
"Cheops wasn't much," she said: "he won the 
Liverpool Autumn Cup in Blink Benny's year; 
but most people said it was a fluke." 

Talbot Bulstrode shuddered afresh ; but a feel- 
ing of pity mingled with his horror. " If I had a 
rister," he thought, "I would get her to talk to 
this miserable girl, and bring her to a sense of her 
iniquity." 

Aurora said no more to the captain of Hussars, 
but relapsed into the old far-away gaze into 
vacancy, and sat twisting a bracelet round and 
loimd upon her finely modelled wrist. - It was a 
diamond bracelet, worth a couple of hundred 
pounds, which had been given heat that day by her 
fieiiher. He would have invested all his fortune in 
Messrs. Hunt and Boskell's cunning handiwork, if 
Aurora had sighed for gems and gewgaws. Miss 
Floyd's glance fell upon the glittering ornament, 
and she looked at it long and earnestly, rather as 
if she were calculating the value of the stones than 
admiring the ta^ of the workmanshq). 



WHAT BECAME OF THE DIAMOND BRACELET. 63 

While Talbot was watching her, full of wonder- 
ing pity and horror, a young man hurried up to 
the spot where she was seated, and reminded her 
of an engagement for the quadrille that was form- 
ing. She looked at her tablets of ivory, gold, and 
turquoise, and with a certain disdainful weariness 
rose and took his arm. Talbot followed her reced- 
ing form. Taller than most among the throng, 
her queenly head was not soon lost sight of. 

**A Cleopatra with a snub nose two sizes too 
small for her face, and a taste for horseflesh !" said 
Talbot Bulstrode, ruminating upon the departed 
divinity. ^^She ought to carry a betting-book 
instead of those ivory tablets. How distrait she 
was all the time she sat here ! I dare say she has 
made a book for the Leger, and was calculating 
how much she stands to lose. What will this poor 
old banker do with her ? put her into a madhouse, 
or get her elected a member of the Jockey Club ? 
With her black eyes and fifty thousand pounds, 
she might lead the sporting world. There has 
been a female Pope, why should there not be a 
female ' Napoleon of the Turf* ?" 

Later, when the rustling leaves of the trees in 
Beckenham Woods were shivering in that cold 



64 AURORA FLOYD. 

gray hour which precedes the advent of the dawn, 
Talbot Bulstrode drove his friend away from, the 
banker's h'ghted mansion. He talked of Aurora 
Floyd during the whole of that long cross-country 
drive. He was merciless to her follies ; he ridi- 
culed, he abused, he sneered at and condemned 
her questionable tastes. He bade Francis Lewis 
Maldon marry her at his peril, and wished him joy 
of Buch a wife. He declared that if he had such a 
woman for his sister he would shoot her, unless she 
reformed and burnt her betting-book. He worked 
himself up into a savage humour about the young 
lady's delinquencies, and talked of her as if she had 
done him an unpardonable injury by entertaining 
a taste for the Turf ; till at last the poor meek 
young comet plucked up a spirit, and told his 
superior oflScer that Aurora Floyd was a very jolly 
girl, and a good girl, and a perfect lady, and tiiat, 
if she did want to know who won the Leger, it was 
no business of Captain Bulstrode's, and that he, 
Bulstrode, needn't make such a howling about it- 

While the two men are getting to high words 
about her, Aurora is seated in her dressing-room, 
listening to Lucy Floyd's babble about the ball. 

" There was never such a delightful party," that 




WHAT BECAME OF THE DIAMOND BRACELET. 65 

yoimg lady said ; ^^ aad did Aurora see So-and-so, 
and So-and-so, and So-and-so? and above all, 
did she observe Captain Bulstrode, who had 
served all through the Crimean war, and who 
walked lame, and was the son of Sir John Walter 
Baleigh Bulstrode, of Bulstrode Castle, near 
Camelford T 

Aurora shook her head with a weary gesture. 
No, she hadn't noticed any of these people. 
Poor Lucy's childish talk was stopped in a mo- 
ment. 

" You are tired, Aurora dear," she said : " how 
cruel I am to worry you !*' 

Aurora threw her arms about her cousin's neck, 
and hid her &ce upon Lucy's white shoulder. 

" I am tired," she said, " very, very tired." 

She spoke with such an utterly despairing 
weariness in her tone, that her gentle cousin was 
alarmed by her words. 

"You are not unhappy, dear Aurora?" she 
asked anxiously. 

" No, no — only tired. There, go, Lucy. Grood 
night, good night." 

She gently pushed her cousin from the room, 
rejected the services of her maid, and dismissed 

YOL. I, F 



66 AURORA FLOYD. 

her alsa Then, tired as she was, she removed the 
-candle from the dressing-table to a desk on the 
other side of the room, and seating herself at this 
desk, unlocked it, and took &om one of its inmost 
recesses the soiled pencU^rawl which had been 
given her a week before by the man who tried to 
sell her a dog in Cockspur Street. 

The diamond bracelet, Archibald Floyd's birth- 
day gift to his daughter, lay in its nest of satin 
and velvet upon Aurora's dressing-table. She took 
the morocco-case in her hand, looked for a few 
moments at the jewel, and then shut the lid of the 
little casket with a sharp metallic snap. 

" The tears were in my £Ekther's eyes when he 
clasped the bracelet on my arm," she said, as she 
reseated heiself at the desk. ^Khe could see me 
now I'* 

She wrapped the morocco case in a sheet of 
foolscap, secured the parcel in several places 
with red wax and a plain seal^ and directed it 
thus: — 

Care of Mr. Joseph Green, 
Bell Inn, 

Doncaster." 



WHAT BECAia OF THK DIAUpND BBACIEI.ET. '67 

Early the next morning Mi88 Floyd droye her 
aunt and cousin into Croydon, and, leaving them 
at a Berlin-wool shop, went alone to the post-ofl5ee, 
where she registered and posted this valuable 
parcel. 



f 2 



68 AtTBOHA FLOYD, 



CHAPTER IV. 

AFTER THE BALL. 

Two days after Aurora's birthnight festival, 
Talbot Bulstrode's phaeton dashed once more 
into the avenue at Felden Woods. Again the 
captain made a sacrifice on the shrine of friend- 
ship, and drove Francis Maldon from Windsor to 
Beckenham, in order that the young comet might 
make those anxious inquiries about the health of 
the ladies of Mr. Floyd's household, which, by a 
pleasant social fiction, are supposed to be neces- 
sarjr after an evening of intermittent ^.altzes and 
quadrilles. 

The junior oflBcer was very grateftJ for this 
kindness ; for Talbot, though the best of fellows, 
was not much given to putting himself out of the 
way for the pleasure of other people. It would 
have been far pleasanter to the captain to dawdle 
away the day in his own rooms, lolling over those 




AFTER THE BALi;.. 69 

erudite works which his brotherofficers described 
by the generic title of "heavy readyig," or, ac- 
cording to the popular belief of those hare-brained 
young men, employed in squaring the circle in 
the solitude of his chamber. 

Talbot Bulstrode was altogether an inscrutable 
personage to his comrades of the 11th Hussars* 
His black-letter folios, his polished mahogany 
cases of mathematical instruments, his proof- 
before-letters engravings, were the fopperies of a 
young Oxonian rather than an officer who had 
fought and bled at Inkermann, The young men 
who breakfefited with him in his rooms trembled 
as they read the titles of the big books on the 
shelves, and stared helplessly at the grim saints 
and angular angels in the pre-Eaphaelite prints 
upon the walls. They dared not even propose 
to smoke in those sacred chambers, and were 
ashamed of the wet impressions of the rims of 
the Moselle bottles which they left upon the 
mahogany cases. 

It seemed natural to people to be a&aid of 
Talbot Bulstrode, just as little boys are firightened 
of a beadle, a policeman, and a schoolmaster, even 
before they have been told the attributes of these 



70 .AtTBORA FLOTD/ 

terrible beings. The colonel of the 11th Hnssars^ 
a portly gentleman, who rode fifteen stone, and 
wrote his name high in the Peerage, was fright- 
etied of Talbot. That cold gray eye struck a 
silent awe into the hearts of men and women with 
its straight penetrating gaze that always seemed 
to be telling them they were foxmd out. The 
colonel was afraid to tell his best stories when 
Talbot was at the mess-table, for he had a dim 
consciousness that the captain was aware of the 
discrepancies in those brilliant anecdotes, though 
that officer had nerer implied a doubt by either 
look or gesture. The Irish adjutant forgot to 
brag about his conquests amongst the fair sex: 
the younger men dropped their voices when they 
talked to each other of the side-scenes at Her 
Majesty's Theatre; and the corks flew faster, and 
the laughter grew louder, when Talbot left the 
room. 

The captain knew that he was more respected 
than beloved, and like all proud men who repel 
the warm feelings of others in utter despite of 
themselves, he was grieved and wounded because 
his comrades did not become attached to him. 

"Will anybody, out of all the millions upon 



AFTER THE BALL, it 

this wide earth, ever love me ?" he thought. " No 
one ever has as yet. Not even my father and 
mother. They have been proud of me ; but they 
never loved me. How many a young profligate 
has brought his parente' gray hairs with sorrow to 
the grave, and has been beloved with the last 
heart-beat of those he destroyed, as I have never 
been in my life ! Perhaps my mother would have 
loved me better, if I had given her more trouble ; 
if I had scattered the name of Bulstrode all over 
London upon post-obits and dishonoured accept- 
ances ; if I had been drummed out of my regiment^ 
and had walked down to Cornwall without shoes 
or stockings, to fall at her feet, and sob out 
my sins and sorrows in her lap, and ask her to 
mortgage her jointure for the payment of my 
debts. But I have never asked anything of her, 
dear soul, except her love, and that she has been 
unable to give me. I suppose it is because I do 
not know how to ask. How often I have sat by 
her side at Bulstrode, talking of all sorts of indif- 
ferent subjects, yet with a vague yearning at my 
heart to throw myself upon her breast and implore 
of her to love and bless her son ; but held aloof by 
some icy barrier that I have been powerless all my 



72 AURORA FLOYD. 

life to break down ! What woman has ever loved 
me? Not one. They have tried to many me, 
because I shall be Sir Talbot Bulstrode of Bulstrode 
Castle ; but how soon they have left off angling 
for the prize, and shrunk away from me chilled 
and disheartened I I shudder when I remember 
that I shall be three-and-thirty next March, and 
that I have never been beloved. I shall sell out, 
now the fighting is over, for I am no use amongst 
the fellows here; and, if any good little thing 
would fall in love with me, I would marry her and 
take her down to Bulstrode, to my mother and 
father, and turn country gentleman." 

Talbot Bulstrode made this declaration in all 
sincerity. He wished that some good and pure 
creature would fall in love with him, in order that 
he might marry her. He wanted some sponta- 
neous exhibition of innocent feeling which might 
justify him in saying, " I am beloved !" He felt 
little capacity for loving, on his own side ; but he 
thought that he would be grateful to any good 
woman who would regard him with disinterested 
affection, and that he would devote his life to 
making her happy. 

" It would be something to feel that if I were 




AFTEB THE BALU 73 

smashed in a railway accident, or dropped out of 
a balloon, some one creature in this world would 
think it a lonelier place for lack of ma I wonder 
whether my children would love me ? I dare say 
not. I should freeze their young affections with 
the Latin grammar ; and they would tremble as 
they passed the door of my study, and hush their 
voices into a frightened whisper when papa was 
within hearing." 

Talbot Bulstrode's ideal of woman was some 
gentle and feminine creature crowned with an 
aureole of pale auburn hair ; some timid soul with 
downcast eyes, &inged with golden-tinted lashes ; 
some shrinking being, as pale and prim as the 
mediaeval saints in his pre-Baphaelite engravings, 
spotless as her own white robes, excelliog in all 
womanly graces and accomplishments, but only 
exhibiting them in the narrow circle of a home. 

Perhaps Talbot thought that he had met with 
his. ideal when he entered the long drawing-room 
at Felden Woods with Comet Maldon on the 
seventeenth of September, 1857. 

Lucy Floyd was standing by an open piano, with 
her white dress and pale golden hair bathed in a 
flood of autunm sunlight That sunlit %ure came 



7i .AURORA FLOTD« 

Yrnck to Talbot's memory long afterwards, after 
a fltonny interval, in which it had been blotted 
away and forgotten, and the long drawing-room 
stretched itself ont like a picture before his eyes. 

Yes, this was his ideaL This gracefnl girl» 
with the shimmering light for ever playing upon 
bar hair, and the modest droop in her white eye- 
]id& But nndemonstrative as usual. Captain Bnl- 
strode seated himself near the pianoi, after the 
biief ceremony ci greeting, and contemplated 
Lucy with graTe eyes that betrayed no especial 



He had not tak^i much notice of Lncr Floyd 
on the night cf the ball; indeed, Lucy was 
scarcely a candle-ljgfat beauty; her hair wanted 
the sunshine gleaming through it to light up the 

golden halo about her hce^ and the delicate [wik 
of her cheeks waxed pale in the glare of the great 
dbandeliersw 

While Captain Boktrode was watching Lucy 
with that graTe ccmtemplatrre gaie, trying to 
find out whether ^le was in anr war different 
from other girls he had known, and whether the 
purity of her delicate beauty was more tfian skin 
deep> the window opposite to him was dadcened. and 



AFTER THE BALL. 75 

Aurora Floyd stood between him and the sun-- 
shine. 

The banker's daughter paused on the threshold 
of the open window, holding the collar of an im- 
mense mastiff in both her hands, and looking 
irresolutely into the room. 

Miss Floyd hated morning callers, and she was 
debating within herself whether she had been 
seen, or whether it might be possible to steal 
away unperceivei 

But the dog set up a big bark, and settled the 
question. 

** Quiet, Bow-wow," she said; *^ quiet, quiet, 
boy." 

Yes, the dog was called Bow-wow. He was 
twelve years old, and Aurora had so christened 
him in her seventh yeax, when he was a blun- 
dering, big-headed puppy, that sprawled upon 
the table during the little girl's lessons, upiset 
ink-bottles over her copy-books, and ate whole 
chapters of Pinnock's abridged histories. 

The gentlemen rose at the sound of her voice, 
and Miss Floyd came into the room and sat down 
at a little distance from the captain and her 
cousin, twirling a straw hat in her hand and 



7Q .AURORA FLOTD. 

staring at her dog, who seated himself resolutely 
by her chau-, knockmg double-knocks of good 
temper upon the carpet with his big taiL 

Though she said very little, and seated herself 
in a careless attitude that bespoke complete in* 
difference to her visitors, Aurora's beauty extin- 
guished poor Lucy, as the rising sun extinguishes 
the stars. 

The thick plaits of her black hair made a great 
diadem upon her low forehead, and crowned her 
an Eastern empress ; an empress with a doubtful 
nose, it i8 true, but an empress who reigned by 
right divine of her eyes and hair. For do not 
these wonderful black eyes, which perhaps shine 
upon us only once in a lifetime, in themselves 
constitute a royalty ? 

Talbot Bulstrode turned away from his ideal to 
look at this dark-haired goddess, with a coarse 
8t»w hat in her hand and a big mastiff:s h^ad 
lying on her lap. Again he perceived that ab- 
straction in her manner which had puzzled him 
upon the night of the balL She listened to her 
visitors politely, and she answered them when they 
spoke to her ; but it seemed to Talbot as if she 
constrained herseK to attend to them by an effort. 



AFTEB THE BALL. 77 

** She wishes me away, I dare say," he thonght ; 
**and no doubt considers me a *slow party,' be- 
cause I don't talk to her of horses and dogs." 

The captain resumed his conversation with 
Lucy. He found that she talked exactly as 
he had heard other young ladies talk ; that she 
knew all they knew, and had been to the places 
they had visited. The ground they went over 
was very old indeed, but Lucy traversed it with 
channing propriety. 

" She is a good little thing," Talbot thought ; 
" and would make an admirable wife for a country 
gentleman. I wish she would fall in love with 
me. 

Lucy told him of some excursion in Switzerland, 
where she had been during the preceding autumn 
with her father and mother. 

"And your cousin,'* he asked, "was she with 
you?" 

" No ; Aurora was at school in Paris, with the 
Demoiselles Lespard." 

" Lespard, Lespard !" he repeated ; " a Protest- 
ant pension in the Faubourg Saint-Dominique. 
Why, a cousin of mine is being educated there, 
a Miss Trevyllian. She has been there for three 



73 . AURORA FliOTD. 

or four years. Do you remember Constance 
Ireyyllian at the Demoiselles Lespard, Miss 
Floyd r said T&lbot^ addressing himself to 
Aororn. 

" Constance Trevyllian I Yes, I remember 
her/' answered the banker's daughter. 

She said nothing more, and for a few moments 
there was rather an awkward pansa 

** Miss Treyyllian is my cousin," said the captain* 

«* Indeed r 

'^I hope that you were Tery good Mends." 

« Oh, yes.** 

She bent oyer her dog, caressing his big head, 
and not even looking up as she spoke of Miss 
TvevyUian. It seemed as if the subject was 
utterly indifferent to her, and she disdained even 
to affect an interest in it 

Talbot Bulstrode bit his lip with offended pride. 
''I suppose this purse-proud heiress looks down 
upon the Trevyllians of Tredethlin," he thought, 
'^ because they can boast of nothing better than 
a few hundred acres of barren moorland, some 
exbausted tin-mines, and a pedigree that dates 
firam the days of King Arthur." 

Archibald Floyd came iato the drawing-room 



AFTER THE BALL. 79 

while the officers were seated there, and bade 
them welcome to Felden Woods. 

**A long drive, gentlemen," he said; "your 
horses will want a rest. Of course you will dine 
with us. We shall have a full moon to-night, 
and youll have it as light as day for your drive 
back." 

Talbot looked at Francis Lewis Maldon, who was 
sitting staring at Aurora with vacant, open-* 
mouthed admiration. The young officer knew 
that the heiress and her fifty thousand pounds 
were not for him; but it was scarcely the less 
pleasant to look at her, and wish that like Captain 
Bulstrode he had been the eldest son of a rich 
baronet. 

The invitation was accepted by Mr. Maldon as 
cordially as it had been given, and with less than 
his usual stifihess of manner on the part of 
Talbot Bulstrode. 

The luncheon-bell rang while they were talking, 
and the little party adjourned to the dining-room, 
where they found Mrs. Alexander Floyd sitting at 
the bottom of the table. Talbot sat next to Lucy, 
with Mr. Maldon opppsite to them, while Aurora 
took her place beside her father. 



80 AUBORA FLOTD« 

The old man was attentiye to Ids guests, bnt 
the shallowest observer could have scarcely failed 
to notice his watchfulness of Aurora. It was ever 
present in his careworn face, that tender, anxious 
glance which turned to her at every pause in the 
conversation, and could scarcely withdraw itself 
from her for the common courtesies of life. If 
she spoke, he listened, — Glistened as if every care- 
less, half-disdainfiil word concealed a deeper mean- 
ing which it was his task to discern and unraveL 
If she was silent^ he watched her still more 
closely, seeking perhaps to penetrate that gloomy 
veil which sometimes spread itself over her hand- 
some face, 

Talbot Bulstrode was not so absorbed by his 
conversation with Lucy and Mrs. Alexander as to 
overlook this peculiarity in the £Either's manner 
towards his only child. He saw too that when 
Aurora addressed the banker, it was no longer 
with that listless indiflerence, half weariness, half 
disdain, which seemed natural to her on other 
occasions. The eager watchfulness of Archibald 
Floyd was in some measure reflected in his 
daughter; by fits and starts, it is true, for she 
generally sank back into that moody abstraction 



AFTER THE BALL« 81 

which Captain Bulstrode had observed on the 
night of the ball ; but still it was there, the same 
feeling as her father's, though less constant and 
intense. A watchful, anxious, half-sorrowful affec- 
tion, which could scarcely exist except under 
abnormal circumstances. Talbot Bulstrode was 
vexed to find himself wondering about this, and 
growing every moment less and less attentive to 
Lucy's simple talk. 

** What does it mean?" he thought; "has she 
fallen in love with some man whom her father has 
forbidden her to maory, and is the old man trying 
to atone for his severity ? That's scarcely likely. 
A woman with a head and throat like hers could 
scarcely fail to be ambitious — ambitious and re- 
vengeful, rather than over-susceptible of any tender 
passion. Did she lose half her fortune upon that 
race she talked to me about? I'll ask her pre- 
sently. Perhaps they have taken away her 
betting-book, or lamed her favourite horse, or 
shot some pet dog, to cure him of distemper. 
She is a spoiled child, of course, this heiress, and 
I dare say her father would try to get a copy of 
the moon made for her, if she cried for that 
planet." 

VOL. I. ^ 



82 . AUBORA FLOYD; 

After lunchean^ the banker took his guests mto 
the gardens that stretched far away npon two sides 
of the house ; the gardens which poor Eliza Floyd 
had helped to plan nineteen years before. 

Talbot Bulstrode walked rather stiffly from his 
Crimean wound, but Mrs. Alexander and her 
daughter suited their pace to his, while Aurora 
walked before them with her father and Mr. 
Maldon, and with the mastiff close at her side. 

**Tour cousin is rather proud, is she not?" 
Talbot asked Lucy, after they had been talking of 
Aurora. 

" Aurora proud ! oh, no, indeed : perhaps, if she 
has any fault at all (for she is the dearest girl that 
ever lived), it is that she has not sufficient pride ; 
I mean with regard to servants, and that sort of 
people. She would as soon talk to one of those 
gardeners as to you or me ; and you would see no 
difference in her manner, except that perhaps it 
would be a little more cordial to them than to us. 
The poor people roimd Felden idolize her." 

"Aurora takes after her mother," said Mrs. 
Alexander ; " she is the living image of poor Eliza 
Floyd." 

" Was Mrs. Floyd a countrywoman of her hus- 



AFTER THE BALL. 83 

band's?" Talbot asked. He was wondering how 
Aurora came to have those great, brilliant, black 
eyes, and so much of the south in her beauty. 

" No ; my uncle's wife belonged to a Lancashire 
family." 

' A Lancashire family I If Talbot Baleigh Bul- 
strode could have known that the family name was 
Prodder ; that one member of the haughty house 
had passed his youth in the pleasing occupa- 
tions of a cabin-boy, making thick coffee and 
toasting greasy herrings for the matutinal meal 
of a surly captain, and receiving more corporal 
correction from the sturdy toe of his master's boot 
than sterling copper coin of the realm! If he 
could have known that the great aunt of this dis- 
dainful creature, walking before him in all the 
inajesty of her beauty, had once kept a chandler's 
shop in an obscure street in Liverpool, and for 
aught any one but the banker knew, kept it still I 
But this was a knowledge which had wisely been 
kept even from Aurora herself, who knew little 
except that, despite of having been bom with that 
allegorical silver spoon in her mouth, she was 
poorer than other girls, inasmuch as she was 
motherless. 

G 2 



84 AURORA FLOTD. 

Airs. Alexander, Lucy, and the captain overtook 
the others upon a rustic bridge, where Talbot 
stopped to rest Anrora was leaning over the 
rough wooden balostrade, looking lazily at the 
water. 

"Did your favonritewinthe race, Miss Floyd?** 
he asked, as he watched the effect of her profile 
against the sunlight ; not a very beantifdl profile 
certainly, but for the long black eyelashes, and 
the radiance nnder them, which their daikest 
ahadows coold never hide. 

" Which fatTonrite ?** she said. 

^ The horse yon spoke to me about the other 
night, — ^Thunderbolt ; did he win ?** 

** I am Tery scary to hear it," 
Auixna looked up at him, reddening angrily. 
**TVhv8o?" she asked. 

** Because I thought you were interested in his 



soccess.** 



As Talbot said this, he observed, for the first 
time, that Archibald Floyd was near enough to 
overhear their conversation, and, fmthennoie that 
he was regaiding his dauirhter with even more 
than his usual watchfulness. 




AFTEB THE BALL. 85 

' ** Do not talk to me of racing; it annoys papa,** 
Aurora said to the captain, dropping her voice. 
Talbot bowed. " I was rights then," he thought ; 
** the turf is the skeleton. I dare say Miss Floyd 
has been doing her best to drag her feither's name 
into the * Gazette/ and yet he evidently loves her 
to distraction; while I ** There was some- 
thing so very pharisaical in the speech^ that 
Captain Bulstrode would not even finish it mentally. 
He was thinking, "This girl, who, perhaps, has 
been the cause of nights of sleepless anxiety and 
days of devouring care, is tenderly beloved by her 
fiEither ; while I, who am a model to all the elder 
fions of England, have never been loved in my 
life." 

At half-past six the great bell at Felden Woods 
rang a clamorous peal that went shivering above 
the trees, to tell the country-side that the feimily 
were going to dress for dinner; and another peal 
at seven, to tell the villagers round Beckenham 
and West Wickham that Maister Floyd and his 
household were going to dine ; but nqt altogether 
an empty or discordant peal, for it told the hungry 
poor of broken victuals and rich and delicate 
meats to be had almost for asking in the servants' 



86 . AURORA FLOYD. 

oflSces; — shreds of fiicandeatix and patches of 
dainty preparations, quarters of chickens and 
carcasses of pheasants, which would have gone to 
fatten the pigs for Christmas, but for Archibald 
Floyd's strict commands that all should be given 
to those who chose to come for it. 

Mr. Floyd and his visitors did not leave the 
gardens till after the ladies had retired to dress. 
The dinner-party was very animated, for Alexander 
Floyd drove down from the City to join his wife 
and daughter, bringing mth him the noisy boy 
who was just going to Eton, and who was passion- 
ately attached to his cousin Aurora ; and whether 
it was owing to the influence of this young gentle- 
man, or to that fitfulness which seemed a part of 
her nature, Talbot Bulstrode could not discover, 
but certain it was that the dark cloud melted 
away from Miss Floyd's face, and she abandoned 
herself to the joyousness of the hour with a radiant 
grace, that reminded her £Either of the night when 
Eliza Percival played Lady Teazle for the last 
time, and took her farewell of the stage in the 
little Lancashire theatre. 

It needed but this change in his daughter 
to make Archibald Floyd thoroughly happy. 




AFTER THE BALL. 8? 

f Aurora's smiles seemed to shed a revivifying in- 
fluence upon the whole circle. The ice melted 
away, for the sun had broken out, and the winter 
was gone at last. Talbot Bulstrode bewildered 
his brain by trying to discover why it was that 
this woman was such a peerless and fascinating 
creature. Why it was that, argue as he would 
against the fact, he was nevertheless allowing 
himself to be bewitched by this black-eyed siren ; 
freely drinking of that cup of bang which she 
presented to him, and rapidly becoming intoxicated. 

" I could almost fall in love with my fedr-haired 
ideal,*' he thought^ '^but I cannot help admiring 
this extraordinary girl. She is like Mrs. Nisbett 
in her zenith of fame and beauty; she is like 
Cleopatra sailing down the Cydnus ; she is like 
Nell Gwynne selling oranges; she is like Lola 
Montes giving battle to the Bavarian students; 
she is like Charlotte Corday with the knife in her 
hand, standing behind the friend of the people in 
his bath ; she is like everything that is beautifrd, 
and strange, and wicked and unwomanly, and 
bewitching ; and she is just the sort of creature 
that many a fool would fiill in love with." 

He put the length of the room between himself 



'88 AURORA FLOYD; 

• 

and the enchantressy and took his seat by the 
grand piano, at which Lucy Floyd was playing 
slow harmonious symphonies of Beethoven. The 
drawing-room at Felden Woods was so long, that, 
seated by this piano, Captain Bulstrode seemed 
to look back at the merry group about the heiress 
as he might have looked at a scene on the stage 
from the back of the boxes. He almost wished 
for an opera-glass as he watched Aurora's graceM 
gestures and the play of her sparkling eyes ; and 
theli turning to the piano, he listened to the 
drowsy music, and contemplated Lucy's face, 
marvellously fair in the light of that fiill moon of 
which Archibald Floyd had spoken, the glory of 
which, streaming in from an open window, put out 
the dim wax-candles on the piano. 

All that Aurora's beauty most lacked was richly 
possessed by Lucy. Delicacy of outline, per- 
fection of feature, purity of tint, all were there ; 
but while one fiice dazzled you by its shining 
splendour, the other impressed you only with a 
feeble sense of its charms, slow to come and quick 
to pass away. There are so many Lucys but so 
few Auroras; and while you never could be 
critical with the one, you were merciless in your 




iJTEB THE BALL. 89 

scrutiny of the other. Talbot Btdstrode was 
attracted to Lucy by a yague notion that she was 
just the good and timid creature who was destined 
to make him happy; but he looked at her as 
calmly as if she had been a statue^ and was as fiilly 
aware of her defects as a sculptor who criticises 
the work of a rival. 

But she was exactly the sort of woman to make 
a good wife. She had been' educated to that end 
by a careful mother. Purity and goodness had 
watched over her and hemmed her in from her 
cradle. She had never seen unseemly sights, or 
heard unseemly sounds. She was as ignorant as a 
baby of aU the vices and horrors of this big world. 
She was lady-like^ accomplished, well informed; 
and if there were a great many others of precisely 
the same type of graceful womanhood, it was cer- 
tainly the highest type, and the holiest^ and the best 

Later in the evening, when Captain Bulstrode's 

« 

phaeton was brought round to the flight of steps 
in front of the great doors, the little party assem- 
bled on the terrace to see the two o£Scers depart, 
and the banker told his guests how he hoped this 
visit to Felden would be the beginning of a lasting 
acquaintance. 



90 AURORA FLOYD. 

"I am going to take Aurora and my niece to 
Brighton for a month or so/' he said, as he shook 
hands with the captain; ^^but on our return you 
must let us see you as often as possible." 

Talbot bowed, and stammered his thanks for the 
banker's cordiality. Aurora and her cousin Percy 
Floyd, the young Etonian, had gone down the steps, 
and were admiring Captain Bulstrode's thorough- 
bred bays, and the captain was not a little dis- 
tracted by the picture the group made in the moon- 
light. 

He never forgot that picture. Aurora, with her 
coronet of plaits dead black against the purple air, 
and her silk dress shimmering in the uncertain 
light, the delicate head of the bay horse visible 
above her shoulder', and her ringed white hands 
caressing the animal's slender ears, while the pur- 
blind old mastiff, vaguely jealous, whined com- 
plainingly at her side. 

How marreUoBS k the sympathy which exists 
between some people and the brute creation ! I 
think that hoorses and dogs understood every word 
that Aurora said to them, — ^that they worshipped 
lier firom the dim depths of their inarticulate soqH 
and would have willin^y gone to death to do hex 



AFTEB THE BALL. 91 

service. Talbot observed all this with an uneasy 
sense of bewilderment. 

"I wonder whether these creatures are wiser 
than we?" he thought; "do they recognize some 
higher attributes in this girl than we can perceive, 
and worship their sublime presence ? If this ter- 
rible woman, with her unfeminine tastes and mys- 
terious propensitiiBS, were mean, or cowardly, or 
false, or impure, I do not think that mastiff would 
love her as he does ; 1 do not think my thorough- 
breds would let her hands meddle with their bridles : 
the dog would snarl, and the horses would bite, as 
such animals used to do in those remote old days 
when they recognized witchcraft and evil spirits, 
and were convulsed by the presence of the uncanny. 
I dare say this Miss Floyd is a good, generous- 
hearted creature, — ^the sort of person fast men 
would call a glorious girl, — ^but as well read in the 
*Kacing Calendar' and *KufFs Guide' as other 
ladies in Miss Tonge's novels. I'm really sorry for 
her." 



92 AURORA FLOYD, 



CHAPTEE V. 

JOHN HELLISH. 

The house which the banker hired at Brighton 
for the month of October was perched high up on 
the East Clifif, towering loftily above the wind- 
driven waves ; the purple coast of Shoreham was 
dimly visible from the upper windows in the clear 
autumn mornings, and the Chain Pier looked like 
a strip of ribbon below the cliff. A pleasanter 
situation to my mind than those level terraces to- 
wards the west, from the windows of which the sea 
appears of small extent, and the horizon within 
half a mile or so of the Parade. 

Before Mr. Floyd took his daughter and her 
cousin to Brighton, he entered into an arrangement 
which he thought, no doubt, a very great evidence 
of his wisdom ; this was the engagement of a lady, 
who was to be a compound governess, companion, 
and chaperon to Aurora, who, as Mrs. Alexander 




iOaS HELLISH. 93 

said, was sadly in need of some accomplished and 
watchful person, whose care it would be to train and 
prune those exuberant branches of her nature which 
had been suffered to grow as they would from her in- 
£Euicy. The beautiful shrub was no longer to trail 
its wild stems along the ground, or shoot upward 
to the blue skies at its own sweet will ; it was to be 
trimmed and clipped and £Eistened primly to the 
stony wall of society with cruel nails and galling 
strips of doth. In other words, an advertisement 
was inserted in the * Times ' newspaper, setting forth 
that a lady, by birth and education, was required 
as finishing governess and companion in the house- 
hold of a gentleman, to whom salary was no object, 
provided the aforesaid lady was perfect mistress of 
all the accomplishments under the sun, and was 
altogether such an exceptional and extraordinary 
being as could only exist in the advertising columns 
of a popular joumaL 

But if the world had been filled with exceptional 
beings, Mr. Floyd could scarcely have received 
more answers to his advertisement than came pelt- 
ing in upon the unhappy little postmaster at Beck- 
enham. The man had serious thoughts of hiring 
a cart, in which to convey the letters to Felden. 



94 AUBOBA FLOTD. 

If the banker had advertised for a wife, and had 
stated the amount of his income, he could scarcely 
have had more answers. It seemed as if the 
female population of London, with one accord, was 
seized with the desire to improve the mind and 
form the manners of the daughter of the gentleman 
to whom terms were no object. OflScers' widows, 
clergymen's widows, lawyers' and merchants' 
widows, daughters of gentlemen of high family but 
reduced means, orphan daughters of all sorts of 
noble and distinguished people, — declared them 
selves each and every one to be the person who, 
out of all living creatures upon this earth, was best 
adapted for the post. Mrs. Alexander Floyd se- 
lected six letters, threw the rest into the waste- 
paper basket, ordered the banker's carriage, and 
drove into town to see the six writers thereof. She 
was a practical and energetic woman, and she pot 
the six applicants through their facings so severely, 
that when she returned to Mr. Floyd it was to 
announce that only one of them was good for any 
thing, and that she was coming down to Felden 
Woods the next day. 

The chosen lady was the widow of an ensign 
who had died within six months of his marriage, 



JOHN HELLISH, 95 

and about an honr and a half before he would 
have succeeded to some enonnous property, the 
particulars of which were never rightly understood 
by the friends of his unfortunate relict. But 
vague as the story might be, it was quite clear 
enough to establish Mrs. Walter PoweU in life as 
a disappointed woman. She was a woman with 
straight light hair, and a lady-like droop of the 
head. A woman who had left school to marry, 
and after six months' wedded life had gone back 
to the same school as instructress of the junior 
pupils. A woman whose whole existence had 
been spent in teaching and being taught ; who had 
exercised in her earlier years a species of hand-to- 
mouth tuition, teaching in the morning that which 
she learnt over-night; who had never lost an 
opportunity of improving herself; who had grown 
mechanically proficient as a musician and an 
artist, who had a certain parrot-like skill in foreign 
languages, who had read aU the books incumbent 
upon her to read, and who knew aU the things 
imperative for her to know, and who, beyond all 
this, and outside the boundary of the schoolroom 
waU, was ignorant and souUess and low-minded 
and vulgar. Aurora swallowed the bitter piU as 



86 AURORA FLOYD. 

best she mighty and accepted Mrs. Pdwell as the 
person chartered for her improvement : — a kind of 
ballast to be flmig into the wandering bark, to 
steady its erratic course and keep it off rocks and 
quicksands. 

" I must put up with her, Lucy, I suppose," she 
said ; ** and I must consent to be improved and 
formed by the poor faded creature. I wonder 
whether she will be like Miss Drummond, who 
used to let me off from my lessons, and read novels 
while I ran wild in the gardens and stables. I can 
put up with her, Lucy, as long as I have you with 
me ; but I think I should go mad, if I were to be 
chained up alone with that grim, pale-faced watch- 
dog." 

Mr. Floyd and his family drove from Felden to 
Brighton in the banker's roomy travelling-carriage, 
with Aurora's maid in the rumble, a pile of impe- 
rials upon the roo^ and Mrs. Powell, with her 
young charges, in the interior of the vehicle. 
Mrs. Alexander had gone back to Fulham, having 
done her duty, as she considered, in securing a 
protectress for Aurora ; but Lucy was to stay with 
her cousin at Brighton, and to ride with her on 
the downs. The saddle-horses had gone down the. 




JOHN HELLISH. 97 

day before with Aurora's groom, a gray-haired and 
rather surly old fellow who had served Archibald 
Floyd for thirty years; and the mastiff called 
Bow-wow travelled in the carriage with his mis* 

tress. 

About a week after the arrival at Brighton, 
Aurora and her cousin were walking together on 
the West Clitf, when a gentleman with a stiff 1^ 
rose from a bench upon which he had been seated 
listening to the band^ and slowly advanced to 
them. Lucy dropped her eyelids with a faint 
blush ; but Aurora held out her hand in answer to 
Captain Bulstrode's salute. 

" I thought I should be sure to meet you down 
here, Miss Floyd," he said. "I only came thia 
morning, and I was going to call at Folthorpe'a 
for your papa's address. Is he quite weU ?" 

" Quite — yes, that is — ^pretty well." A shadow 
stole over her face as she spoke. It was a wonder* 
M face for fitful lights and shades. " But we did 
not expect to see you at Brighton, Captain Bul- 
strode ; we thought your regiment was still quar- 
tered at Windsor." 

"Yes, my regiment — ^that is, the Eleventh is 
still at Windsor ; but I have sold out." 

VOL, I, " 



86 AKSMLk FLOTD. 

^Bold outr lUAh Aurora and her oonabi 
opened Hiw eye^ al ihiB intelligenoe. 

^ YeB ; I wa(^ tired of the army. It's doll waik 
now the fighting in all over. I might haye ex- 
changed and gone i/j India, certainly,'' he added, 
as if in answer to fK>me argoment of his own; ^ but 
Tm. getting middle-aged, and I am tired of roam* 
ing about the world" 

"I should like to go to India," said Aoroca, 
looking seaward as she spoke. 

" Yon, Aurora ! but why?" exclaimed Lucy. 

'' Because I hate England." 

" I thought it was France you disliked." 

^ I hate them both. What is the use of this big 
"woild, if we are to stop for ever in one plaoe^ 
chained to one set of ideas, fettered to one narrow 
circle of people, seeing and hearing of the persons 
we hate for ever and ever, and unable to get 
away from the odious sound of their names ? I 
should like to turn female missionary, and go 
to tl)e centres of Africa with Dr. Livingstone 
and hi« family ; and I would go if it wasn't for 

|>a|>tt." 

ViHtT iiUcy HiartHl at lior cousin in helpless 
amix'/A'Mn-hi, I'lillx)! KuUtrodo found himself £bJ1- 



JOHN HELLISH. 99 

ing back into that state of bewilderment in wbicli 
this girl always threw him. What did she mean, 
this heiress of luneteen yeais of age, by her fits of 
despondency and outbursts of bitterness? Was it 
not perhaps, after aH only an affectation of singu- 
larity? 

Aurora looked at him with her brightest smile 
while he was asking himself this question. ** You 
will come and see papa ?*' she said. 

Captain Bulstrode declared that he desired no 
greater happiness than to pay his respects to Mr.^ 
Floyd, in token whereof he walked with the young 
ladies towards the East Cliffl 

From that morning, the officer became a con- 
stazit visitor at the banker's. He played chess 
with Lucy, accompanied her on the piano when 
she sang, assisteld her with valuable hints when 
she painted in water-colours, put in lights here 
and glimpses of sky there, deepened autumnal 
browns, and intensified horizon purples, and made 
himself altogether useM to the young lady, who 
was, as we know, accomplished in all lady-like 
arts. Mrs. Powell, seated in one of the windows 
of the jdeasant drawing-room, shed the benignant 
light of her faded countenance and pale-blue eyes 

H 2 



100 AUBORA FLOYD. 

upon Ae two yonng people, and represented all 
ihe proprieties in her own person ; Anrora, when 
the weather prevented her riding, occupied harself 
more restlessly than profitably by taking np books 
and tossing them down, pulling Bow-wow's ears, 
staring out of the windows, drawing caricatures 
of the promenaders on the cliff, and dragging out 
a wonderful little watch, with a bunch of dangling 
inexplicable golden absurdities, to see what 
o'clock it was. 

Talbot BulstrOde, while leaning over Lucy's 
piano or drawing-board, or pondering about the 
next move of his queen, had ample leisure to 
watch the movements of Miss Floyd, and to be 
shocked at the purposeless manner in which that 
young lady spent the rainy mornings. Sometimes 
he saw her poring over * Bell's Life,' much to the 
horror of Mrs. Walter Powell, who had a vague 
idea of the iniquitous proceedings recited in that 
terrible journal, but who was afraid to stretch her 
authority so far as to forbid its perusal. 

Mrs. Powell looked with silent approbation 
upon the growing familiarity between gentle Lucj' 
Floyd and the captain. She had feared at first 
that Talbot was an admirer of Aurora's ; but the 



JOHN MEliilSH. 101 

manner of the two soon dispelled her alarm. 
Nothing could be more cordial than Miss Eloyd's 
treatment of the officer; but she displayed the 
same indifference to him that she did to every 
thing else, except her dog and her father. Was it 
possible that well-nigh perfect face and those 
haughty graces had no charm for the banker's 
daughter? Could it be that she could spend 
hour after hour in the society of the handsomest 
and most aristocratic man she had ever met/ and 
yet be as heart-whole as when the acquaintance 
began ? There was one person in the little party 
who was for ever asking that question, and never 
able to answer it to her own satisfaction, and that 
person was Lucy Floyd. Poor Lucy Floyd, who 
was engaged, night and day, in mentally play- 
ing that old German game which Faust and 
Margaret played together with the full-blown rose 
in the garden, — " He loves me — ^loves me not 1" 

Mrs. Walter Powell's shallow-sighted blue eyes 
might behold in Lucy Captain Bulstrode's attrac- 
tion to the East Cliff; but Lucy herseK knew 
better — ^bitterly, cruelly better. 

" Captain Bulstrode's attentions to Miss Lucy 
Floyd were most evident," Mrs. Powell said one 



102 AUBOBA fLOTD. 

da^ when the captain left^ after a long momfng^g 
nmade and singing and chess. How Lucy hated 
the prim phrase 1 None knew so well as she the 
yahie of those ^ attentions." They had been at 
Brighton fflx weeks^ and for the last five the 
captain had been with them nearly every mom- 
ing. He had ridden with them on the downs^ 
and driven with them to the Dyke, and lounged 
beside them listening to the band, and stood 
behind them in their box at the pretty little 
theatre, and crashed with them into the Pavilion 
to hear Grisi and Mario, and Alboni and poor 
Bosio. He had attended them through the whole 
round of Brighton amusements, and had never 
seemed weary of their companionship. But for 
all this, Lucy knew what the last leaf upon the 
rose would tell her, when the many petals should 
be plucked away, and the poor stem be left bare. 
She knew how often he forgot to turn over the 
leaf in the Beethoven sonatas ; how often he put 
streaks of green into an horizon that should have 
been purple, and touched up the trees in her 
foreground with rose-pink, and suffered himself to 
be ignominiously checkmated from sheer inatten- 
tion, and gave her wandering, random answers 



JOHN MELLSSH. 103 

when she spoke to him. She knew how restless 
he was when Anrora read * Bell's Life/ and how the 
very crackle of the newspaper made him wince 
with nervons pain. She knew how' tender he was 
of the purblind mastiff, how eager to be friends 
with him, how almost sycophantic in his atten- 
tions to the big stately animaL Lucy knew, in 

short, that which Talbot as yet did not know him- 

» 

self: she knew that he was fast falling over head 
and ears in loye with her cousin, and she had at 
the same time a vagne idea that he wonld much 
rather have fallen in love with herself, and that 
he was blindly struggling with the growing 
passion. 

It was so ; he was falling in love with Aurora. 
The more he protested against her, the more de- 
terminedly he exaggerated her follies, and argued 
with himself upon the folly of loving her, so much 
the more surely did he love her. The very battle 
he was fighting kept her for ever in his mind, 
until he grew the veriest slave of the lovely 
vision, which he only evoked in order to endea- 
vour to exorcise. 

"How could he take her down to Bulstrode, 
and introduce her to his father and mother ?** he 



104 AURORA FLOYD. 

thought ; and at the thought she appeared to him 
illuminating the old Cornish mansion by the 
radiance of her beauty, fascinating his father, 
bewitching his mother, riding across the moorland 
on her thorough-bred mare, and driving all the 
parish mad with admiration of her. 

He felt that his visits to Mr. Floyd's house were 

fast compromising him in the eyes of its inmates. 

« 

Sometimes he felt himself bound in honour to 
make Lucy an offer of his hand ; sometimes he 
argued that no one had any right to consider his 
attentions more particular to one than to the 
other of the young ladies. K he had known of 
that weary game which Lucy was for ever 
mentally playing with the imaginary rose, I am 
sure he would not have lost an hour in proposing 
to her; but Mrs. Alexander's daughter had been 
far too well educated to betray one emotion of her 
heart, and she bore her girlish agonies, and 
concealed her hourly tortures, with the quiet 
patience common to these simple womanly 
martyrs. She knew that the last leaf must soon 
be plucked, and the sweet pain of uncertainty be 
for ever ended. 
Heaven knows how long Talbot Bulstrode 



JOHK MELLISH. 105 

might have done battle with his growing passion, 
had it not been tor an event which put an end 
to his indecision and made him desperate. This 
event was the appearance of a rival. 

He was walking with Aurora and Lucy upon, 
the West Cliff one afternoon in November, when a 
mail-phaeton and pair suddenly drew up against 
the railings that separated them from the road, 
and a big man, with huge masses of Scotch plaid 
twisted about his waist and shoulders, sprang out 
of the vehicle, splashing the mud upon his legs, 
and rushed up to Talbot, taking off his hat as 
he approached, and bowing apologetically to the 
ladies. 

"Why, Bulstrode," .he said, **who on earth 
would have thought of seeing you here ? I heard 
you were in India, man ; but what have you done 
to your leg ?" 

He was so breathless with hurry and excitement, 
that he was utterly indifferent to punctuation; 
and it seemed as much as he could do to keep 
silence while Talbot introduced him to the ladieB 
as Mr. Mellish, an old friend and school-fellow. 
The stranger stared with such open-mouthed ad- 
miration at Miss Floyd's black eyes, that the 



106 AUBORA. FLOYD. 

captain turned round upon him almost savagely, 
as he asked what had brought him to Brighton. 

** The hunting season, my boy. Tired of York- 
shire ; know every field, ditch, hedge, pond, sunk 
fence, and scrap of timber in the three Ridings. 
I'm staying at the Bedford; I've got my stud 
with me — give you a mount to-morrow morning if 
you like, Htmiers meet at eleven — ^Dyke Road. 
Tve a gray that'll suit you to a nicety— carry my 
weight, and as easy to sit as your arm-chair." 

Talbot hated his Mend for talking of horses ; 
he felt a jealous terror of him.' This, perhaps, 
was the sort of man whose society would be agree- 
able to Aurora,-^this big, empty-headed York- 
shireman, with his babble about his stud and 
hunting appointmenta. But turning sharply 
round to scrutinize Miss Floyd, he was gratified 
to find that young lady looking vacantly at the 
gathering mists upon the sea, and apparently 
unconscious of the existence of Mr. John Mellish, 
of Mellish Park, Yorkshire. 

This John Mellish was, I have said, a big man, 
looking even bigger than he was by reason of 
about eight yards' length of thick shepherd's 
plaid twisted scientifically about his shoulders. 



JOHN HELLISH. 107 

He was a man of thirty years of c^e at least, 
but having withal such a boyish exuberance 
in his manner, such a youthful and innocent 
joyousness in his face, that he might haVe been 
a youngster of eighteen just let loose from some 
pubKc academy of the muscular Christianity 
school. I think the Kev. Charles Kingsley would 
have delighted in this big, hearty, broad-ohested 
young Englishman, with brown hair brushed 
away from an open forehead, and a thick auburn 
moustache bordering a mouth for ever ready to 
expand into a laugh. Such a laugh, too ! such a 
hearty and sonorous peal, that the people on the 
Parade turned roimd to look at the owner of those 
sturdy lungs, and smiled good-naturedly for very 
sympathy with his honest merriment 

Talbot Bulstrode would have given a hundred 
pounds to get rid of the noisy Torkshireman. 
What business had he at Brighton? Wasn't 

the biggest county in England big enough to 

* 

hold him, that he must needs bring his north- 
country bluster to Sussex, for the annoyance of 
Talbot's friends? 

Captain Bulstrode was not any better pleased 
when, stroUing a little farther on, the party met 



ipS AURORA FLOYD. 

with Archibald Floyd, who had come out to look 
for his daughter. The old man begged to be 
introduced to Mr. MeUiah, and invited the honest 
Yorkshireman to dine at the East Cliff that very 
eFening, much to the aggravation of Talbot, who 
fell sulkily back, and allowed John to make the 
acquaintance of the ladies. The familiar brute 
ingratiated himself into their good graces in about 
ten minutes ; and by the time they reached the 
banker's house was more at his ease with Aurora 
than was the heir of Bulstrode after two months' 
acquaintance. He accompanied them to the door- 
step, shook hands with the ladies and Mr. Floyd, 
patted the mastiff Bow-wow, gave Talbot a playful 
aledge-hammer-like slap upon the shoulder, and 
ran back to the Bedford to dress for dinner. His 
spirits were so high that he knocked over little 
boys and tumbled against fsishionable young men, 
who drew themselves up in stiff amazement as the 
big fellow dashed past them. He sang a scrap of 
a hunting-song as he ran up the great staircase to 
his eyrie at the Bedford, and chattered to his 
valet as he dressed. He seemed a creature especi- 
ally created to be prosperous ; to be the owner 
and dispenser of wealth, the distributor of good 



JOHN HELLISH. 100 

things. People who were strangers to him ran 
after and served him on speculation, knowing 
instinctively that they would get ample reward 
for their trouble. Waiters in a coffee-room de*' 
serted other tables to attend upon that at which 
he was seated. Box-keepers would leave parties 
of six shivering in the dreary corridors while they 
found a seat for John Mellish. Mendicants picked 
him out from the crowd in a busy thoroughfare, 
and hung about him, and would not be driven 
away without a dole from the pocket of his roomy 
waistcoat. He was always spending his money 
for the convenience of other people. He had an 
axmj of old servants at Mellish Park, who adored 
him and tyrannized over him after the manner of 
their kind. His stables were crowded with horses 
that were lame, or wall-eyed, or otherwise dis- 
qualified for service, but that lived on his bounty 
like a set of joUy equine paupers, and consumed 
as much com as would have supplied a racing 
stud. He was perpetually paying for things he 
neither ordered nor had, and was for ever being 
cheated by the dear honest creatures about him, 
who, for all they did their best to ruin him, would 
have gone through typical fire and water to serve 



110 AUSORA FLOTD 

him, and would have climg to him, an d worked for 
him, aad supported him out of those very^ savings 
lor which they had robbed him, when the ruin 
came. If " Muster John " had a headache, every 
cvettture in that disorderly housdiold was unhappy 
and uneasy till the ailment was cured ; every lad 
in the stables, every servant-maid in the house, 

was €ager that his or her remedy should be tried 
for his restoration. K you had said at MeUish 
Park that Jc^'s fSair hce and Inroad shoulders 
were not the highest forms of manly beauty and 
grace, you would have been set down as a creature 
devoid of all taste or judgment. To the mind c£ 
that household, John MeUish in ^'pink " and pipe- 
clayed tops was m(H« beautiful than the Apollo 
Belvidere, whose bronsse image in little adorned a 
niche in the halL If you had told them that 
fourteen-stone weight was not indispensable to 
manly perfection, or that it was possible there 
were more lofty acoomplishments than driving 
unic(»ii or shooting forty-seven head of game in 
a morning, or pulling the bay nmre's shoulder into 
joint that time she got^ a sprain in the hunting- 
field, or vanquishing Joe Millmgs, the East 
Biding smaller, without so much as losing breath, 



JOHN HELLISH. Ill 

— those simple-hearted Torkshire servants would 
have fairly laughed in your face. Talbot Bul- 
strode complained that everybody respected him, 
and nobody loved him. John Mellish might have 
uttered the reverse of this complaint, had he been 
so minded. Who could help loving the honesty 
generous squire, whose house and purse were open 
to all the country-side? Who could feel any 
chilling amount of respect for the friendly and 
familiar master who sat upon the table in the big 
kitchen at Mellish Park, Mrith his dogs and 
servants round him, and gave them the history 
of the day's adventures in the hunting-field, till 
the old blind fox-hound at his feet lifted his big 
head and set up a feeble music? No; John 
Mellish was well content to be beloved, and 
never questioned the quality of the affection 
bestowed upon him. To him it was all the 
purest virgin gold; and you might have talked 
to him for twelve hours at a sitting without con- 
vincing him that men and women were vile and 
mercenary creatures, and that if his servants, and 
his tenantry, and the poor about his estate, loved 
him, it was for the sake of the temporal benefits they 
received of him. He was as unsuspicious as a 
child, who believes that the fiainee in a pantomime 



112 AUBORA FLOYD. 

are fairies for ever and ever, and that the harlequin 
is bom in patches and a mask. He was as open to 
flattery as a school-girl who distributes the con- 
tents of her hamper among a circle of toadies. 
When people told him he was a fine fellow, he 
believed them, and agreed with them, and thought 
that the world was altogether a hearty, honest 
place, and that everybody was a fine fellow. 
Never having an arrOre pensee himself, he looked 
for none in the words of other people, but thought 
that every one blurted out their real opinions, and 
offended or pleased their fellows, as frankly and 
blunderingly as himself. If he had been a 
vicious young man, he would no doubt have gone 
altogether to the bad, and £Edlen among thieves. 
But being blest with a nature that was inherently 
pure and innocent^ his greatest follies were no 
worse than those of a big school-boy who errs 
fix>m very exuberance of spirit. He had lost his 
mother in the first year of his infancy, and his 
£Bither had died some time before his majority ; so 
there had been none to restrain his actions, and it 
was something at thirty years of age to be able to 
look back upon a stainless boyhood and youth, 
which might have been befouled with the slime 
of the gattere, and infected with the odour of 




JOHN MELLISH* 113 

villanous haunts. Had he not reason to be proud 
of this ? 

Is there anything, after all, so grand as a pure 
and unsullied life — a &ir picture, with no ugly 
sliadows lurking in the background — a smooth 
poem, with no crooked, halting line to mar the 
verse — a noble book, with no unholy page— a 
simple story, such as our children may read? 
Can any greatness be greater ? can any nobility be 
more truly noble ? When a whole nation mourned 
with one voice but a few months since ; when we 
drew down our blinds and shut out the dull light 
of the December day, and listened sadly to the &r 
booming of the guns ; when the poorest put aside 
their work-a-day troubles to weep for a widowed 
Queen and orphaned children in a desolate palace ; 
when rough omnibus-drivers forgot to blaspheme 
at each other, and tied decent scraps of crape upon 
their whips, and went sorrowfully about their com- 
mon business, thinking of that great sorrow at 
Windsor, — ^the words that rose simultaneously to 
every lip dwelt most upon the spotless character of 
him who was lost ; the tender husband, the watchfiil 
father, the kindly master, the liberal patron, the 
temperate adviser, the stainless gentleman. 
VOL. I. . I 



114 AURORA. FLOTD. 

It is many years since England mourned for 
another royal personage who was called a " gentle- 
man." A gentleman who played practical jokes, 
and held infamous oi^es, and persecuted a wretched 
foreign woman, whose chief sin and misfortune it 
was to be his wife ; a gentleman who cut out his 
own nether garments, and left the companion of 
his gayest revels, the genius whose brightness had 
flung a spurious lustre upon the dreary saturnalia 
of yice, to die destitute and despairing. Surely 
there is some hope that we have changed for the 
better witiiin the last thirty years, inasmuch as we 
attach a new meaning to-day to this simple title 
of ** gentleman." I take some pride, therefore, 
in the two young men of whom I write, for the 
simple reason that I have no dark patches to gloss 
oveir in the history of either of them. I may fail 
in making you like them ; but I can promise that 
you shall have no cause to be ashamed of them. 
Talbot Bulstrode may offend you with his sulky 
pride; John MeUish may simply impress you as 
a blundering countrified ignoramus; but neither 
of them shall ever shock you by an ugly word or 
an unholy thought. 



115 



CHAPTER VL 

BEJECTED AND ACCEPTED. 

The dinner-party at Mr. Floyd's was a very merry 
one ; and when John Mellish and Talbot Bulstrode 
left the East Cliflf to walk westward, at eleven 
o'clock at night, the Torkshireman told his friend 
that he had never enjoyed himself so much in his 
life. This declaration must, however, be taken 
with some reserve ; for it was one which John was 
in the habit of making about three times a week : 
but he really had been very happy in the society 
of the banker's family ; and, what was more, he 
was ready to adore Aurora Floyd without any 
further preparation whatever. 

A few bright smiles and sparkling glances, a 
little animated conversation about the humting-field 
and the race-course, combined with half a dozen 
glasses of those effervescent wines which Archibald 
Floyd imported from the fair Moselle country, had 

I 2 



116 AUBORA FLOTD. 

been quite enough to torn the head of John Mel- 
lish, and to cause him to hold wildly forth in the 
moonlight upon the merits of the beautiful heiress. 
" I verily beKeve I shall die a bachelor, Talbot," 
he said, ^' unless I can get that girl to marry me. 
Fve only known her half a dozen hours, and I'm 
head-over-heels in love with her already. What 
is it that has knocked me over like this, Bulstrode ? 
Fve seen other girls with black eyes and hair, 
and she knows no more of horses than half the 
women in Yorkshire; so it isn't that. What is 
it, then, hey ?" 

He came to a full stop against a lamp-post, and 
stared fiercely at his Mend as he asked this ques- 
tion. 

Talbot gnashed his teeth in silence. 
It was no use battUng with his fate, then, he 
thought ; the fascination of this woman had the 
same effect upon others as upon himself; and 
while he was arguing with, and protesting against, 
his passion, some brainless fellow, like this Mellish, 
would step in and win the prize. 

He wished his friend good night upon the steps 
of the Old Ship Hotel, and walked straight to his 
room, where he sat with his window open to the 



REJECTED AND ACCEPTED. 117 

mild November night, staring out at the moon-lit 
sea. He determined to propose to Aurora Floyd 
before twelve o'clock the next day. 

Why should he hesitate ? 

He had asked himself that question a hundred 
times before, and had always been unable to 
answer it ; and yet he had hesitated. He could 
not dispossess himself of a vague idea that there 
was some mystery in this girl's life ; some secret 
known only to herself and her father ; some one 
spot upon the history of the past which cast a 
shadow on the present. And yet, how could that 
be ? How could that be, he asked himself, when 
her whole life only amounted to nineteen years, 
and he had heard the history of those years over 
and over again? How often he had artfully led 
Lucy to tell him the simple story of her cousin's 
girlhood I The governesses and masters that had 
come and gone at Felden Woods. The ponies 
and dogs, and puppies and kittens, and petted 
foals ; the little scarlet riding-habit that had been 
made for the heiress, when she rode after the 
hounds with her cousin Andrew Floyd. The 
worst blots that the officer could discover in those 
early years were a few broken china vases, and a 



118 AUBORA FLOYD. 

great deal of ink spilt over badly-^mtten French 
exercises. And after being educated at home 
nntil she was nearly eighteen, Aurora had been 
transferred to a Parisian finishing-school; and 
that was alL Her life had been the every-day 
life of other girls of her own position, and she 
differed from them only in being a great deal 
more fiEiscinating, and a little more wilful, than 
the majority. 

Talbot laughed at himself for his doubts and 
hesitations. ''What a suspicious brute I must 
be," he said, " when I imagine I have fallen upon 
the clue to some mystery simply because there is 
a moumfdl tenderness in the old man's voice 
when he speaks to his only child I If I were 
sixty-seven years of age, and had such a daughter 
as Aurora, would there not always be a shuddering 
terror mingled with my love, — a horrible dread 
that something would happen to take her away 
from me? I will propose to Miss Floyd to- 
morrow." 

Had Talbot been thoroughly candid with him- 
self, he would perhaps have added, "Or John 
Mellish will make her an offer the day after." 

Captain Bulstrode presented himself at the 



KEJEOTED AND ACCEPTED. 119 

house on the East Cliff some time before noon on 
the next day ; but he found Mr. Mellish on the 
door-step, talking to Miss Floyd's groom and in- 
specting the horses, which were waiting for the 
young ladies ; for the young ladies were going to 
ride, and John Mellish was going to ride with 
them. 

"But if you'll join us, Bulstrode," the York- 
shireman said, good-naturedly, " you can ride the 
gray I spoke of yesterday. Saunders shall go 
back and fetch him." 

Talbot rejected this offer rather sulkily. " I've 
my own horses here, thank you," he answered. 
" But if you'll let your groom ride down to the 
stables and tell my man to bring them up, I shall 
be obliged to you." 

After which condescending request Captain 
Bulstrode turned his back upon his friend, crossed 
the road, and folding his arms upon the railings, 
stared resolutely at the sea. But in five minutes 
more the ladies appeared upon the door-step, and 
Talbot, turning at the sound of their voices, was 
fain to cross the road once more for the chance of 
taking Aurora's foot in his hand as she sprang 
into her saddle ; but John Mellish was before him 



120 AUBORA FLOYD. 

again, and Mias Floyd's mare was curveting under 
the touch of her light hand before the captain 
ooold interfere. He allowed the groom to attend 
to Lucy, and, mounting as quickly as his stiff 1^ 
would allow him, he prepared to take his place by 
Aurora's side. Again he was too late ; Miss Floyd 
had cantered down the hill attended by Mellish, 
and it was impossible for Talbot to leave poor 
Lucy, who was a timid horsewoman. 

The captain never admired Lucy so little as on 
horseback. EQs pale saint with the halo of golden 
hair seemed to him sadly out of place in a side- 
gaddle. He looked back at the day of his morning 
visit to Felden, and remembered how he had 
admired her, and how exactly she corresponded 
with his ideal, and how determined he was to 
be bewitched by her rather than by Aurora. " If 
she had fedlen in love with me," he thought, ** I 
would have snapped my fingers at the black- 
browed heiress, and married this fair-haired angel 
out of hand. I meant to do that when I sold my 
commission. It was not for Aurora's sake I left 
the army, it was not Aurora whom I followed 
down here. Which did I follow? What did I 
follow, I wonder ? My destiny, I suppose, which 



BEJECTED AND AOCEFTED. 121 

is leading me through such a pitch's dance as 
I never thought to tread at the sober age of three- 
and-thirty. If Lucy had only loved me, it might 
have been all different.** 

He was so angry with himself, that he was half 
inclined to be angry with poor Lucy for not extri- 
cating him from the snares of Aurora. If he 
could have read that innocent heart, as he rode in 
sulky silence across the stunted turf on the wide 
downs ! If he could have known the slow sick 
pain in that gentle breast, as the quiet girl by his 
side lifted her blue eyes every now and then to 
steal a glance at his hard profile and moody brow ! 
If he could have read her secret later, when, 
talking of Aurora, he for the first time clearly 
betrayed the mystery of his own heart ! If he 
could have known how the landscape grew dim . 
before her eyes, and how the brown moorland 
reeled beneath her horse's hoo& until they seemed 
going down, down, down into some fathomless 
depth of sorrow and despair ! But he knew 
nothing of this; and he thought Lucy Floyd a 
pretty, inanimate girl, who would no doubt be 
delighted to wear a becoming dress as bridesmaid 
at her cousin's wedding. 



122 AUBOSA FLOTIX 

Theie ine to be a dumer-partr that ereniiig 
vpm the East ChS, to which both John Mdl^h 
and Talbot were inTited ; and the captain saTagely 
determined to bzing mattezs to an ksoe befoie 
theni^t was out. 

Talbot Ttaleigh Bnktrode woold haTe been t^j 
angry with yon, had yon watched him too closdy 
th^ eyening as he £istaied the golden solitaiie 
in his narrow erayat befbie his lookiiig-^asB in 
the bow-window at ihe Old Sbip^ fie was 
adiamed oi himself for being caQseles&ly savage 
with his Talet^ whom he d^miased abruptly before 
hebegan todie»; and had not the courage to call 
the Tnxn back again when his own hot hands 
lefosed to do their office, fie spilt half a bottle- 
fnl of peifiune npon his yamished bootsy and 
oneared his &ce with a scented waxy eompocmd 
boi^ht of MoDsieiir Engene 'fiinunel, which 
promised to liuer 9am grai99er his moustache. 
Bie broke one of the crystal-boxes in his dress- 
Bug-case, and pnt the bite of broken gTa«R in 
his wai&tcoa&-{>ocket from sheer absence of mind. 
He miderwent semi-strangnlation with the mibend- 
ing drcalar collar in which, as a gentleman, it 
was his duty to invest himself; and he could 



REJECTED AND ACCEPTED. 123 

have beaten the ivory backs of his brushes upon 
his head in blind execration of that short, stubborn 
black hair, which only curled at the other ends ; 
and when at last he emerged from his room, it 
was with a spiteful sensation that every waiter in 
the place knew his secret^ and had a perfect 
knowledge of every emotion in his breast, and 
that the very Newfoundland dog lying on the 
dooi>step had an inkling of the truth, as he lifted 
up his big head to look at the captain, and then 
dropped it again with a contemptuously lazy yawn. 
Captain Bulstrode offered a handful of broken 
glass to the man who drove him to the East Cliff, 
and then confusedly substituted about fifteen 
shillings worth of sUver coin for that abnormal 
Bpecies of payment. There must have been two 
or three earthquakes and an ecUpse or so going on 
in some part of the globe, he thought, for this jog- 
trot planet seemed all tumult and confusion to 
Talbot Bulstrode. The world was all Brighton, 
and Brighton was all blue moonlight, and steel- 
coloured sea, and glancing, dazzling gas-light, and 
hare-soup and cod and oysters, and Aurora Floyd. 
Yes, Aurora JPloyd, who wore a white silk dress, 
and a thick circlet of dull gold upon her hair. 



121 AUBORA FLOYD. 

who look more like Cleopatra to-ni^t than 
erer, and who suffered Mr. John Mellish to take 
her down to dinner. How Talbot hated the York- 
shireman's big fair £ftce, and blue eyes, and white 
teeth, as he watched the two yoong people across 
a jdialanx of glass and silrer, and flowers and 
wax-candles, and jpickles, and other Fortnnm-and- 
Mason ware! Here was a golden oppcHtnnity 
lost, thought the discontented captain, forgetful 
that he oould scarcely hare proposed to Miss 
Floyd at the dinner-table^ amidst the jin^e of 
glasses and poppmg of corks, and with a big 
powdered footman chargmg at him with a side- 
didii or a saoce-tureen idifle he put the fatal 
question. The desired mom^it came a few hours 
afterwards, and Talbot had no longer any excuse 
for delay. 

The Norember eyening was mild, and the three 
windows in the drawing-room were open fircMD 
floor to ceiling. It was pleasant to look out from 
the hot gas-light upon that wide sweep of moon- 
lit ocean, with a white sail glimmering here and 
there against the purple night. Captain Bulstrode 
sat near one c^ the open windows, watching that 
tranquil scene, with, I fear, rery little appreciation 



BEJEGTED AND ACCEPTED. 125 

of its beauty. He was wishing that the people 
would drop off and leave him alone with Aurora. 
It was close upon eleven o'clock, and high time 
they went. John Mellish would of course insist 
upon waiting for Talbot; this was what a man 
had to endure on account of some old school-boy 
acquaintance. All Bugby might turn up against 
him in a day or two, and dispute with him for 
Aurora's smiles. But John Mellish was engaged 
in a very animated conversation with Archibald 
Floyd, having contrived with consummate artifice 
to ingratiate himself in the old man's favour, and 
the visitors having one by one dropped off, Aurora, 
with a listless yawn that she took little pains to 
conceal, strolled out on to the broad iron balcony. 
Lucy was sitting at a table at the other end of the 
room, looking at a book of beauty. Oh, my poor 
Lucy ! how much did you see of the Honourable 
Miss Brownsmith's high forehead and Boman 
nose ? Did not that young lady's handsome face 
stare up at you dimly through a blinding mist of 
tears that you were a great deal too well educated 
to shed ? The chance had come at last. K life 
had been a Haymarket comedy, and the entrances 
and exits arranged by Mr. Buckstone himself, it 



126 AUBORA FLOTD. 

oonld hare hUeai out no better flian tiiis. Talbot 
Boktrode followed Aniora on to the balcony; 
John Melliah went on with his story aboat the 
Beverley fbzhonnds; and Lacy, holding her breath 
at the other end of the room, knew as well 
what was going to happen as the captain him- 
self 

Is not life dliogeiQier a long comedy, wiQi Fate 
for the stage-manager, and Passion, Inclination, 
Loye, Hate, Beyenge, Ambition, and Ayance by 
tarns in the prompter's box ? A tiresome comedy 
sometimes, with dreary, talkee-talkee front scenes 
which come to nothing, but only serve to make 
the andience more impatient as they wait while 
the stage is set and the great people change 
their dresses; or a '^sensation" comedy, with 
nnlooked-for tableaux and unexpected denaue" 
ments; but a comedy to the end of the chapter, 
for tiie sorrows which seem tragic to ns are very 
Amny when seen firom the other side of the foot- 
lights ; and our Mends in the pit are as mnch 
amnsed with onr tmmpery griefe as the Hay- 
market habitues when Mr. Box finds his gridiron 
empty, or Mr. Cox misses his rasher. What can 
be fonnier than other people's anguish ? Why do 



BEJECrrED AND AOOBPTED. 127 

we enjoy Mr. Maddison Morton's farces, and laugh 
till the tears run down our cheek at the comedian 
who enacts them? Because there is scarcely a 
£arce upon the British stage which is not, from 
the rising to the dropping of the curtain, a record 
of human anguish and undeserved misery. Yes, 
undeserved and unnecessary torture — ^there is the 
special charm of the entertainment If the man 
who was weak enough to send his wife to Gaia- 
berwell Jiad crushed a baby behind a chest of 
drawers, his sufferings wouldn't be half so delight- 
fill to an intellectual audience. If the gentleman 
who became embroiled with his laundress had 
murdered the young lady in the green boots, 
where would be the fim of that old Adelphi farce 
in which poor Wright was wont to delight us? 
And so it is with our friends on the other side of 
the footlights, who enjoy our troubles all the more 
because we have not always deserved them, and 
whose sorrows we shall gloat over by-€tnd-by, 
when the bell for the next piece begins, and it is 
their turn to go on and act. 

Talbot Bulstrode went ont on to the balcony, and 
the earth stood still for ten minutes or so, and 
every steel-blue star in the sky glared watchfully 



128 AUBORA FIX>TB. 

doim upon the jCMing man in this the siqireme 
fnsis of his lifie. 

Anrara was leaning against a slender iron 
pilaster, looking aslant into the town and acro^ 
the town to the sea. She was wrapped in an 
opeia doak; no sti£^ embnndered, yoong-lady- 
fied g^nnent; bat a Tolnminons diaperr of soft 
scarlet woollen stii£^ such as Semiiamide herself 
mig^ have worn. ^ She looks like Semiramide/' 
Talbot thought, ''How did this Scotch banker 
and his Lancashire wife come to hare an Assyrian 
ibr dieir daughter?^ 

He b^an brilliantly, this yoong man, as lovers 
generally da 

^ I am afraid yon mnst haye iatigaei yourself 
this erening. Miss Floyd," he remarked. 

AxacfrsL stifled a yawn as she answered him. 
^1 am rather tired," she said. 

It wasn't very encouraging. How was he to 
b^in an eloquent speech, when she might fall 
asleep in the middle of it? But he did; he 
dashed at once into the heart of his subject, and 
he told her how he loved her ; how he had done 
battle with this passion, which had been too strong 
for him ; how he loved her as he never thought 



REJECTED AND ACCEPTED. 129 

to love any creature upon this earth ; and how he 
cast himself before her in all humility to take his 
sentence of life or death from her dear lips. 

She was silent for some moments, her profile 
sharply distinct to him in the moonlight, and 
those dear lips trembling visibly. Then, with a 
half-averted face, and in words that seemed to 
come slowly and pamfuUy from a stifled throat, 
she gave him his answer. 

That answer was a rejection ! 

Not a young lady's No, which means Yes to- 
morrow ; or which means perhaps that you have 
not been on your knees in a passion of despair, 
like Lord Edward Fitz-Morkysh in Miss Oderose's 
last noveL Nothing of this kind; but a calm 
negative, careftdly and tersely worded, as if she 
feared to mislead him by so much as one syllable 
that could leave a loophole through which hope 
might creep into his heart He was rejected. 
For a moment it was quite as much as he could 
do to believe it. He was incUned to imagine that 
the signification of certain words had suddenly 
changed, or that he had been in the habit of mis- 
taking them all his life, rather than that those 
words meant this hard fact^ namely, that h^ 

VOL. I. K 



130 AUBOBA FLOYD. 

Talbot Baleigh Bulstrode, of Bulstrode CasUe, 
and of Saxon extraction, had been rejected by the 
daughter of a Lombard-Street banker. 

He paused — ^for an hour and a half ot so, as it 
seemed to him — ^in order to collect himself before 
he fifpoke again.. 

*'May I — ^venture to inquire," he said, — ^how 
horribly commonplace the phrase seemed! he 
could have used no worse had he been inquiring 
for furnished lodgings, — " may I ask if any prior 
attachment — to one more worthy ^" 

" Oh, no, no, no 1" 

The answer came upcm him so suddenly, that 
it almost startled him as much as her rejection. 

" And yet your decision is irrevocable?" 

" Quite irrevocable." 

** Forgive me if I am intrusive; but — ^but Mr. 
Floyd may perhaps have formed some higher 



97 



He was interrupted by a stifled sob as she 
dasped her hands over her averted &ce. 

** Higher views r she said; "poor dear old man! 
no, no, indeed." 

"It is scarcely strange that I bore you with 
these questions. It is so hard to think that. 



BEJECTED AND ACCEPTED. 131 

meeting you with your affections disengaged, I have 
yet been utterly unable to win one shadow of regard 
upon which I might build a hope for the future.' 

Poor Talbot! Talbot, the splitter of meta- 
physical straws and chopper of logic, talking of 
building hopes on shadows, with a lover's delirious 
stupidity. 

" It is so hard to resign every thought of your 
ever coming to fdter your decision of to-ni^t, 
Aurora,*' — ^he lingered on her name for a moment, 
first because it was so sweet to say it, and secondly, 
in the hope that she would speak, — " it is so hard 
to remember the fabric of happiness I had dared to 
bmld, and to lay it down here to-night for ever." 

Tfdbot quite forgot that, up to the time of the 

arrival of John Mellish, he had been perpetually 

arguing against his passion, and had declared to 

himself over and over again that he would be a 

consummate fool if he was ever beguiled into 

making Aurora his wife. He reversed the parable 

of the fox; for he had beai inclined to make 

jGEices at the grapes while he fancied them within 

his reach, and now that they w^e removed from 

his grasp, he thought that such delicious froit had 

never grown to tempt mankind. 

K 2 



132 AUBOBA FLOYD. 

**If-— if he said, "my &te had been happier, 
I know how proud my £Etther, poor old Sir John, 
would have been of his eldest son's choice." 

How ashamed he felt of the meanness of this 
speech! The artfol sentence had been constmcted 
Jn order to remind Aurora whom she was refusing. 
He was trying to bribe her with the baronetcy 
which was to be his in due time. But she made 
no answer to the pitiful appeal Talbot was al- 
most choked with mortification. **I see — ^I see," 
he said, "that it is hopeless. Good night, Miss 
noyd." 

She did not even turn to look at him as he left 
the balcony ; but with her red drapery wrapped 
tightly round her, stood shiyering in the moon- 
light, with the sUent tears slowly stealing down 
her cheeks. 

"Higher views I" she cried bitterly, repeating 
a phrase that Talbot used, — ^^ higher views ! Grod 
help him !" 

" I must wish you good-night and good-bye at 
the same time," Captain Bulstrode said, as he 
shook hands with Lucy. 
"Good-bye?" 
" Yes ; I leave Brighton early to-morrow." 



KEJECTED AND ACCEPTED, 133 

"So suddenly r 

** Why, not exactly suddenly. I always meant 
to travel this wiilter. Can I do anything for you 
—at Cairo ?" 

He was so pale and cold and wretched-looking, 
that she abnost pitied him — ^pitied him in spite of 
the wild joy growing up in her heart Aurora 
had refused him — ^it was perfectly clear — ^refiised 
him ! The soft blue eyes filled with tears at the 
thought that a demigod should have endured such 
humiliation. Talbot pressed her hand gently in 
his own clammy pabn. He could read pity in 
that tender look, but possessed no lexicon by which 
he could translate its deeper meaning. 

" Tou wiU wish your uncle good-bye for me, Lucy," 
he said. He called her Lucy for the first time ; 
but what did it matter now? His great affliction 
set him apart from his fellow-men, and gave him 
dismal privileges. "Good-night, Lucy; good- 
night and good-bye. I — ^I — shall hope to see you 
again — ^in a year or two." 

•The pavement of the East Cliff seemed so 
much air beneath Talbot Bulstrode's boots as he 
strode back to the Old Ship ; for it is peculiar 
to us, in our moments of supreme trouble or joy, 



131 AUBOBA FLOYIX 

to lose all consciousness of the earth we tread, and 
to float up0n an atmospheie of sublime egotism, f 
But the captain did not leave Srightan the next 
•day on the first stage of his Egyptian journey. 
He stayed at the fashionable watering-place ; but 
hiQ resolutely abjured the neighbourhood of the 
East Cliff, and, the day being wet, took a pleasant 
walk to Shoreham through the rain; and Shore- 
liam bdng such a pretty places he was no doubt 
much enlivened by that exercisa 

Betuming through the fog at about four o'clock, 
the captain met Mr. John Mellish dose against 
the turnpike outside Cliftonville. 

The two men stared aghast at each other. 
"Why, where on earth are you going?" asked 
Talbot 

'^ Back to Yorkshire by the first train that leaves 
Brighton." 

" But this isn't the way to the station !" 
"No; but they're putting the horses in my 
portmanteau, and my shirts are going by the 

Leeds cattle-train ; and ** 

Talbot Bulstrode burst into a loud laugh, a harsh 
and bitter cachinnation, but affording wondrous 
relief to that gentleman's overcharged breast. 



^ 



REJECTED AND AOCEFTED. 135 

"John Mellish,'* ^^ said* "yon have been pro- 
posing to Anrora Floyd." 

The Yorkshireman turned scarlet. "It — ^ifc— 
wasn't hononrable of her to tell yon," he stam- 
mered. 

" Miss Floyd has neyer breathed a word to me 
upon the snbject Fye jnst come from Shoreham, 
and you've only lately left the East Cliff. ToaVe 
proposed, and you've been rejected." 

"I have," roared John; "and it's deuced hard 
when I promised her she should keep a racing 
stud if she liked, and enter as many colts as she 
pleased for the Derby, and give her own orders to 
the trainer, and I'd never interfere ; — and — and — 
Mellish Park is one of the finest places in the 
county ; and I'd have won her a bit of blue ribbon 
to tie up her bonny black hair." 

"That old Frenchman was right," muttered 
Captain Bulstrode: "there is a great satis&ction 
in the misfortune of others. If I go to my dentist^ 
I like to find another wretch in the waiting-room; 
and I like to have my tooth extracted firsts and to 
see him glare enviously at me as I oome out of the 
torture chamber, knowing that my troubles are 
over, while his are to come. Grood-bye, John Met 



136 AUBOBA FLOTD. 

lish, and God bless yon. Yon'ie not snch a bad 
fellow after alL" 

Talbot felt almost cheerful as he walked back to 
the Ship, and he took a mntton cntlet and tomata 
saace, and a pint of Moselle for his dinner : and 
the food and wine warmed him ; and not having 
slept a wink on the previous nighty he fell into a 
heavy indigestible slumber^ with his head hang- 
ing oyer the sofe^inshion, and dreamt that he was 
at Grand Cairo (or at a place which would have 
been that city had it not been now and then Bul- 
strode Castle, and occasionally chambers in the 
Albany) ; and that Aurora Floyd was with him, 
clad in imperial purple, with hieroglyphics on the 
hem of her robe, and wearing a clown's jacket of 
white satin and scarlet spots, such as he had once 
seen foremost in a great race. Captain Bulstrode 
arose early the. next morning, with the full inten- 
tion of departing from Sussex by the 8.45 express ; 
but suddenly remembering that he had but poorly 
acknowledged Archibald Floyd's cordiality, he de- 
tennined on sacrificing his inclioations on the 
shrine of courtesy, and calling once more at the 
East Cliff to take leave of the banker. Having 
once resolved upon this line of action, the captain 



REJECTED AND ACCEPTED. 137 

would fain have hurried that moment to Mr. Floyd's 
house ; but finding that it was only half-past seven, 
he was compelled to restrain his impatience and 
await a more seasonable hour. Could he go at 
nine? Scarcely. At ten? Yes, surely, as he 
could then leave by the eleven o'clock train. He 
sent his breakfast away untouched, and sat looking 
at his watch in a mad hurry for the time to pass, 
yet growing hot and uncomfortable as the hour 
drew near. 

At a quarter to ten he put on his hat and left 
the hotel. Mr. Floyd was at home, the servant 
told him — upstairs in the little study, he thoughts 
Talbot waited for no more. "You need not 
announce me," he said; "I know where to find 
your master." 

The study was on the same floor as the drawing- 
room ; and close against the drawing-room door 
Talbot paused for a moment. The door was open ; 
the room empty ; no, not empty : Aurora Floyd was- 
there, seated with her back towards him, and her 
head leaning on the cushions of her chair. He 
stopped for another moment to admire the back 
view of that small head with its crown of lustrous 
raven hair, then took a step or two in the direction 



138 AURORA FLOTIX 

of the banker's study ; then stopped again, then 
tamed back, went into the drawing-room, and shut 
the door behind him. 

She did not stir as he approached her, nor 
answer when he stammered her name. Her fstce 
was as white as the Hblcb of a dead woman, and her 
nerveless hands hung over the cushions of the arm- 
chair. A newspaper was lying at her feet She 
had quietly swooned away sitting there by her- 
self, with no one by to restore her to conscious- 
ness. 1 

Talbot flung some flowers from a vase on the 
table, and dashed the water over Aurora's fore- 
head ; then wheeling her chair close to the open 
window, he set her with her face to the wind. In 
two or three moments she began to shiver vio- 
lently, and soon afterwards opened her eyes, and 
looked at him ; as she did so, she put her hands to 
her head, as if trying to remember something. 
*' Talbot !" she said, « Talbot !" 

She called him by his Christian name, she who 
five-and-thirty hours before had coldly forbidden 
him to hope. 

" Aurora," he cried, " Aurora, I thought I came 
here to wish your father good-bye ; but 1 deceived 




REJECTED AND ACCEPTED. 139 

myself. I came to ask you once more, and once 
for all, if your decision of the night before last 
was irrevocable." 

" Heaven knows I thought it was when I uttered 
it." 

" But it was not ?" 

" Do you wish me to revoke it ?" 

"Dolwish? do I " 

*' Because if you really do, I will revoke it ; for 
you are a brave and honourable man. Captain 
Bulstrode, and I love you very dearly." 

Heaven knows into what rhapsodies he might 
have fallen, but she put up her hand, as much as 
to say, *^ Forbear to-day, if you love me," and 
hurried from the room. He had accepted the cup 
of bang which the siren had offered, and had 
drained the very dregs thereof, and was dmnken. 
He dropped into the chair in which Aurora had 
sat, and, absent-minded in his joyfdl intoxication, 
picked up the newspaper that had lain at her feet. 
He shuddered in spite of himself as he looked at 
the title of the journal ; it was ^ Bell's Life.' A 
dirty copy, crumpled, and beewtamed, and emit- 
ting rank odours of inferior tobacco. It was 
directed to Miss Floyd, in such sprawling penman- 



140 AURORA FLOYD. 

ahip as might have disgraced the potboy of a 
sportingpuUic-house:— 

** Miss Floid, 

fell dun wodes, 
kent" 

The newspaper had been redirected to Aurora 
by the honsekeeper at Felden. Talbot ran his eye 
eagerly oyer the firont page; it was almost en- 
tirely filled with adreitisements (and snch adyer- 
tisements I), but in one column there was an ae- 
count headed> "FniGHTruL Accident in Geb- 
xant: an English Jockct kilued."' 

Captain Bolstrode noTer knew why he read of 
ikb accident. It was in no way intaresdng to him, 
bnng an account of a steeple-chase in Prassiay in 
which a heayy English rider and a crack French 
hoise had been killed. There was a great deal of 
regret expressed for the loss of the horse, and none 
jbr the man who had riddenhim, who»the rq)orter 
stated, was Tery Httle known in porting dreks; 
bat in a paragraph low^ down was added this infbr* 
niation, evidently procured at the last moment: 
^ The jockey's name was Ccmy er&'' 



141 



CHAPTER Vn. 
aubora's strange pensioner. 

Archibald Floyd received the news of his 
daughter's choice with evident pride and satisfac^ 
tion. It seemed as if some heavy burden had 
been taken away, as if some cruel shadow had 
been lifted from the lives of father and daughter. 

The banker took his &mily back to Felden 
Woods, with Talbot Bulstrode in his train ; and 
the chintz rooms — ^pretty, cheerftd chambers, with 
bow-windows that looked across the well-kept 
stable-yard into long glades of oak and beech — 
were prepared for the ex-hussar, who was to spend 
his Christmas at Felden. 

Mrs. Alexander and her husband were established 
with her family in the western wing; Mr. and 
Mrs. Andrew were located at the eastern angle ; 
for it was the hospitable custom of the old banker 



142 AURORA FLOYD. 

to summon his kinsfolk about him early in Decern- 
ber, and to keep them with him till the bells of 
picturesque Beckenham church had heralded in 
the New Tear. 

Lucy Floyd's cheeks had lost much of their 
delicate colour when she returned to Felden, and 
it was pronounced, by all who observed the change, 
that the air of the East Cliff, and the autumn winds 
drifting across the bleak downs, had been too much 

for the young lady's strength. 

Aurora seemed to have burst forth into some 
new and more glorious beauty since the morning 
upon which she had accepted the hand of Talbot 
Bulstrode. There was a proud defiance in her 
manner, which became her better than gentleness 
becomes far lovelier women. There was a haughty 
itmfwciance about this young lady which gave new 
brilliancy to her great black eyes, and new music 
to her joyous laugh. She was like some beautiful 
noisy, boisterous waterfall ; for ever dancing, rush- 
ing, sparkling, scintillating, and utterly defying 
you to do anything but admire it. Talbot Bul- 
strode, having once abandoned himseK to the spell 
of the siren, made no further struggle, but fairly 
fell into the pit-falls of her eyes, and was entangled 




aurora's strange pensioner. 143 

in the meshy network of her blue-black hair. The 
greater the tension of the bow-string, the stronger 
the rebound thereof ; and Talbot Bulstrode was as 
weak to give way at last as he had long been 
powerful to resist. I must write his story in the 
commonest words. He could not help it! He 
loved her ; not because he thought her better, or 
wiser, or lovelier, or more suited to him than many 
other women, — ^indeed he had grave doubts upon 
every one of these points, — ^but because it was hia 
destiny, and he loved her. 

What is that hard word which M. Victor Hugo 
puts into the mouth of the priest in * The Hunch* 
back of Notre Dame ' as an excuse for the darkness 
of hissin? 'ANATKH! It was his fate ! Sohe 
wrote to his mother, and told her that he had chosen 
a wife, who was to sit in the halls of- Bulstrode, and 
whose name was to be interwoven with the chro- 
nicles of the house ; told her, moreover, that Miss 
Floyd was a banker's daughter, beautiful and fas- 
cinating, with big black eyes, and fifly thousand 
pounds for her dowry. Lady Baleigh Bulstrode 
answered her son's letter upon a quarter of a quire 
of note-paper, filled with fearful motherly prayers 
and suggestions ; anxious hopes that he had chosen 



144 AURORA FLOYD. 

wisely; questionings as to tlie opinions and 
religious principles of the young lady, — much 
indeed that Talbot would have been sorely puzzled 
to answer. Enclosed in this was a letter to Aurora, 
a womanly and tender epistle, in which pride was 
tempered with love, and which brought big tears 
welling up to Miss Floyd's eyes, until Lady Bul- 
strode's firm penmanship grew blotted and blurred 
beneath the reader's vision. 

And whither went poor slaughtered John Mellish ? 
He returned to Mellish Park, carrying with him his 
dogs, and horses, and grooms, and phaeton, and 
paraphernalia; but his grief— having unluckily 
come upon him after the racing season — ^was too 
much for him, and he fled away from the roomy old 
mansion, with its pleasant surroundings of park 
and woodland ; for Aurora Floyd was not for him, 
and it was all flat, stale, and unprofitable. So he 
went to Paris, or Parry ^ as he called that imperial 
city, and established himseK in the biggest cham- 
bers at Meurice's, and went backwards and forwards 
between that establishment and Galignani's ten 
times a day, in quest of the English papers. He 
dined drearily at Vefour's, Philippe's, the Trois 
Freres, the Maison Doree, and the Caf6 de Paris. 



aurora's strange pensioner. 145 

Sis big voice was heard at every expensive dining 
place in Paris, ordering " Toos hillyar de meUyour : 
V0U8 savez ;" but he sent the daintiest dishes away 
untasted, and would sit for a quarter of an hour 
counting the toothpicks in the tiny blue vases, and 
thinking of Aurora, He rode dismally in the Bois 
de Boulogne, and sat shivering in cafis chantants, 
listening to songs that always seemed set to the 
same melody. He haunted the circuses, and was 
wellm'gh in love with a fair manege rider, who had 
black eyes, and reminded him of Aurora ; till, 
upon buying the most powerfiil opera-glass that 
the Eue de Rivoli could afford, he discovered that 
the lady's face was an inch deep in a certain white 
wash called hhnc rosati, and that the chief glory 
of her eyes were the rings of Indian ink which 
surrounded them. He could have dashed that 
double-barrelled truth-revealer to the gi-ound, and 
trodden the lenses to poM^er with his heel, in his 
passion of despair : better to have been for ever 
deceived, to have gone on believing that woman 
to be like Aurora, and to have gone to that circus 
every night imtil his hair grew white, but not with 
age, and until he pined away and died. 

The party at Felden Woods was a very joyous 

VOL. L L 



146 AURORA FLOYD. 

one. The voices of children made the house 
pleasant ; noisy lads &om Eton and Westminster 
clambered about the balustrades of the staircases, 
wd played battledore-and-shuttlecock upon the 
long stone terrace. These young people were all 
cousins to Aurora Floyd, and loved the banker's 
daughter with a childish worship, which mild Lucy 
could never inspire. It was pleasant to Talbot 
Bulstrode to see that wherever his future wife trod, 
love and admiration waited upon her footsteps. 
Be was not singular in his passion for this glorious 
-creature, and it could be, after all, no such terrible 
folly to love one who was beloved by all who knew 
lier. So the proud Comishman was happy, and 
gave himseK up to his happiness without further 
protest. 

Did Aurora love him ? Did she make him due 
return for the passionate devotion, the blind adora- 
tion ? She admired and esteemed him ; she was 
proud of him— proud of that very pride in his 
nature which made him so different to herself; and 
she was too impulsive and truthful a creature to 
keep this sentiment a secret from her lover. She 
revealed, too, a constant desire to please her be- 
trothed husband, suppressing at least all outward 



aurora's strange pensioner. 147 

token of the tastes that were so unpleasant to him. 
No more copies of * Bell's Life ' littered the ladies^ 
moming-room at Felden; and when Andrew 
Floyd asked Aurora to ride to meet with him, his 
cousin refdsed the offer which would once haye 
been so welcome. Instead of following the Croy- 
don hounds, Miss Floyd was content to drive Tal- 
bot and Lucy in a basket-carriage through the 
frost-bespangled country-side. Lucy was always 
the companion and confidante of the lovers ; it waa 
hard for her to hear their happy talk of the bright 
future stretching far away before them — stretching 
<iown, down the shadowy aisles of Time, to an es- 
cutcheoned tomb at Bulstrode, where husband and 
wife would lie down, full of years and honours, in 
the days to come. It was hard to have to help 
them plan a thousand schemes of pleasure, in which 
--Heaven pity her I— she was to join. But she 
bore her cross meekly, this pale Elaine of modem 
days ; and she never told Talbot Bulstrode that she 
had gone mad and loved him, and was taia to die. 
Talbot and Aurora were both concerned to see 
the pale cheeks of their gentle companion ; but 
everybody was ready to ascribe them to a cold, or 
A cough, or constitutional debility, or some other 

L 2 



148 AURORA FLOYD. 

bodily evil, which was to be cured by drugs and 
boluses; and no one for a moment imagined that 
anything could possibly be amiss with a young 
lady who liyed in a luxurious house, went shopping 
in a carriage and pair, and had more pocket-money 
than she cared to spend. But the Lily Maid of 
Astolat liyed in a lordly castle, and had doubtless 
ample pocket-money to buy gorgeous silks for her 
embroidery, and had little on earth to wish for, 
and nothing to do ; whereby she fell sick for loye 
of Sir Lancelot, and pined and died. 

Sorely the secret of many sorrows lies in this. 
How many a grief has been bred of idleness and 
leisure ! How many a Spartan youth has nursed 
a bosom-devouring fox for very lack of better em- 
ployment! Do the gentlemen who write the 
leaders in our daily journals ever die of grief? 
Do the barristers whose names appear in aknost 
every case reported in those journals go mad for 
love unrequited ? Did the Lady with the lamp 
cherish any foolish passion in those days and nights 
of ceaseless toil, in those long watches of pati^it 
devoticm &r away in the East ? Do the curates of 
over-crowded parishes, the chaplains of gaols and 
oonvict-ships, the great medical attendants in the 




aurora's strange pensioner, 149 

wards of hospitals — do they make for themselyes 
the griefs that kill ? Surely not. With the busiest 
of us there may be some holy moments, some sacred 
hour snatched from the noise and confusion of the 
revolving wheel of Life's machinery, and offered 
up as a sacrifice to sorrow and care ; but the in- 
terval is brief, and the great wheel rolls on, and 
we have no time to pine or die. 

So Lucy Floyd, having nothing better to do, 
nursed and made much of her hopeless passion. 
She set up an altar for the skeleton, and worshipped 
at the shrine of her grief; and when people told 
her of her pale face, and the family doctor wour 
dered at the failure of his quinine mixture, per- 
haps she nourished a vague hope that before the 
spring-time came back again, bringing with it the 
wedding-day of Talbot and Aurora, she would have 
escaped from all this demonstrative love and hap- 
piness, and be at rest. 

Aurora answered Lady Baleigh Bulstrode's 
letter with an epistle expressive of such gratitude 
and humility, such earnest hope of winning the 
love of Talbot's mother, mingled with a dim fear- 
fulness of never being worthy of that affection, as 
won the Cornish lady's regard for her future daug^ 



150 AUBORA FLOYD. 

ter. It was diiOScult to associate the|| impetuous 
gill with that letter, and Lady Bulstrode made an 
image of the writer that very much differed from 
the fearless and dashing original. She twrote Au- 
toia a second letter, more affectionately worded 
than the first, and promised the motherless girl 
a daughter's welcome at Bulstrode. 

** Will she ever let me call her * mother/ Tal- 
bot?" Aurora asked, as she read Lady^Bulstrode's 
second letter, to her lover. *' She is very proud, is 
die not? — ^proud of your ancient descent? My 
father comes from a Glasgow mercantile^family^ 
and I do not even know anything about my 
mother's relations." 

Talbot answered her with a grave smile. 

**She will accept you for your native worth, 
dearest Aurora," he said, ^^ and will ask no foolish 
questions about the pedigree of such a man as 
Archibald Floyd ; a man whom the proudest aristo- 
crat in England might be glad to caU his father- 
in-law. She will reverence my Aurora's transpa- » 
rent soul and candid nature, and will bless me for 
the choice I have made." 

" I shall love her very dearly if she will only let 
zne. Should I have ever cared about horse-racing. 



aurora's strange pensioner. 151 

and read sporting-papers, if I conld have called a 
good woman* mother?"' 

She seemed to ask this question rather of her- 
self than of Talbot 

Complete as was Archibald Floyd's satisfaction 
at his daughter's disposal of her heart, the old man 
could not calmly contemplate a separation £rom 
this idolized daughter ; so Aurora told Talbot that 
she could never take up her abode in Cornwall 
during her father's lifetime; and it was finally 
arranged that the young couple were to spend 
half the year in London, and the other haK at Fel- 
den Woods. What need had the lonely widower 
of that roomy mansion, with its long picture^al- 
lery and snug suites of apartments, each of them 
large enough to accommodate a smaU family? 
What need had one solitary old man of that re- 
tinue of servants, the costly stud in the stables, 
the new-fangled vehicles in the coach-houses, the 
hot-house flowers, the pines and grapes and peaches, 
cultivated by three Scottish gardeners? What 
need had he of these things? He Uved princi- 
pally in the study in which he had once had a 
stormy interview with his only child ; the study in 
which hung the crayon portrait of Eliza Floyd ; 



152 AURORA FLOYD. 

the room which contained an old-fashioned desk 
he had bought for a guinea in his boyhood, and in 
which there were certain letters written by a 
hand that was dead, some tresses of purple-black 
hair cut from the head of a corpse, and a paste- 
board ticket, printed at a little town in Lancashire, 
calling upon the friends and patrons of Miss Eliza 
Percival to come to the theatre, for her especial 
benefit, upon the night of August 20, 1837. 

It was decided, therefore, that Felden Woods 
was to be the country residence of Talbot and 
Aurora, till such time as the young man should 
succeed to the baronetcy and Bulstrode Castle, 
and be required to live upon his estate. In the 
mean time the ex-hussar was to go into Parliament, 
if the electors of a certain little borough in Corn- 
wall, which had always sent a Bulstrode to West- 
minster, should be pleased to return him. 

The marriage was to take place early in May, 
and the honeymoon was to be spent in Switzerland 
and at Bulstrode Castle. Mrs. Walter Powell 
thought that her doom was sealed, and that she 
would, have to quit those pleasant pastures after 
the wedding-day; but Aurora speedily set the 
mind of the ensign's widow at rest by telling her 



aurora's strange pensioner. 153 

that as she, Miss Floyd, was utterly ignorant 
of housekeeping, she would be happy to retain her 
services after marriage as guide and adviser in 
such matters. 

The poor about Beckenham were not forgotten 
in Aurora Floyd's morning drives with Lucy and 
Talbot. Parcels of grocery and bottles of wine 
often lurked beneath the crimson-lined leopard- 
skin carriage-rug ; and it was no uncommon thing 
for Talbot to find himself making a footstool of a 
huge loaf of bread. The poor were very hungry 
in that bright December weather, and bad all 
manner of complaints, which, however otherwise 
dissimilar, were all to be benefited by one especial 
treatment; namely, half-sovereigns, old brown 
sherry, French brandy, and gunpowder tea. Whe- 
ther the daughter was dying of consumption, or 
the father laid up with the rheumatics, or the 
husband in a raging fever, or the youngest boy 
recovering from a fall into a copper of boiling 
water, the above-named remedies seemed alike 
necessary, and were fi|r more popular than the 
chicken-broths and cooling fever-drinks prepared 
by the Felden cook. It pleased Talbot to see his 
betrothed dispensing good things to the eager 



164 AUROBA FLOTD/ 

recipients of her bounty. It pleased him to think 
how even his mother must have admired this high- 
spirited girl, content to sit down in close cottage 
chambers and talk to rheumatic old women. Lucy 
distributed little parcels of tracts prepared by 
Mrs. Alexander, and flannel garments made by 
her own white hands ; but Aurora gave the half- 
€K)Yereigns and the old sherry ; and I'm afraid 
these simple cottagers liked the heiress best; 
although they were wise enough and just enough 
to know that each lady gave according to her 
means. 

It was in returning from a round of these 
charitable visits that an adventure befel the 
little party, which was by no means pleasing to 
Captain Bulstrode. 

Aurora had driven frirther than usual, and it was 
strikmg four as her ponies daahed past Becken- 
ham church and down the hill towards Felden 
Woods. The afternoon was cold and cheerless ; 
light flakes of snow drifted across the hard road, 
and hung here and there gpon the leafless hedges, 
and there was that inky blackness in the sky 
which presages a heavy fall. The woman at the 
lodge ran out with her apron over her head to 



auboba's strange pensioner. 155 

open the gates as Miss Floyd's ponies approached, 
and at the same moment a man rose from a bank 
by the roadside, and came close up] to the little 
carriage. 

He was a broad-shouldered, stout-built fellow, 
wearing a shabby velveteen cut-away coat, slashed 
about with abnormal pockets, and white and greasy 
at the seams and elbows. His chin was muffled 
in two or three yards of dirty woollen comforter, 
after the fashion of his kind ; and the band of his 
low-crowned felt hat was ornamented with a short 
clay pipe, coloured of a respectable blackness. 
A dingy white dog, with a brass-collar, bow legs, 
a short nose, blood-shot eyes, one ear, a hanging 
jaw, and a generally supercilious expression of 
countenance, rose from the bank at the same 
moment with his master, and growled ominously at 
the elegant vehicle and the mastiff Bow-wow 
trotting by its side. 

The stranger was the same individual who had 
accosted Miss Floyd in Cockspur Street three 
months before. , 

I do not know whether Aurora recognized 
this person ; but I know that she touched her 
ponies' ears with the whip, and that the spirited 



156 AURORA FLOYD. 

animals had dashed past the man, and through the 
gates of Felden, when he sprang forward, caught 
at their heads, and stopped the light basket- 
carriage, which rocked under the force of his 
strong hand. 

Talbot Bulstrode leapt from the vehicle, heed- 
less of his stiff 1^, and caught the man by the 
collar. 

*' Let go that bridle I" he cried, lifting his cane; 
^ how dare you stop this lady's ponies ?" 

*' Because I wanted to speak to her, that's why. 
liOt go o* my coat, will yer ?" 

The dog made at Talbot's legs, but the young 
man whirled round his cane and inflicted such 
chastisement upon the snub nose of that animal 
as sent him into temporary retirement, howling 
dismally. 

'^You are an insolent scoundrel, and I've a 
good mind to——" 

" Ter'd be hinserlent, p'raps, if yer was hungry," 
answered the man, with a pitiful whine, which was 
meant to be conciliating. *' Such weather as this 
here's all very well for yoimg swelk such as you, 
as has your dawgs and guns and 'untin'; but the 
winter's tryin' to a poor man's temper, when he's 



aurora's strange pensioner. 157 

industrious and willin', and can't get a stroke of 
honest work to do, or a mouthful of vittals. I 
only want to speak to the young lady ; she knows- 
me well enough." 

'• Which young lady ?" 

" Miss Floyd ; the heiress." 

They were standing a little way from the pony- 
carriage. Aurora had risen from her seat and 
flung the reins to Lucy ; she was looking towards 
the two men, pale and breathless, doubtless ter- 
rified for the result of the encounter. 

Talbot released the man's collar, and went back 
to Miss Floyd. 

** Do you know this person, Aurora ?" he asked., 

« Yes." 

" He is one of your old pensioners, I suppose ?'* 

"He is; do not say anything more to him, 
Talbot. His maimer is rough, but he means no 
harm. Stop with Lucy while I speak to him." 

Bapid and impetuous in all her movements, 
she sprang from the carriage and joined the man 
beneath the bare branches of the trees before 
Talbot could remonstrate. 

The dog, which had crawled slowly back to hi& 
master's side, fawned upon her as she approached. 



158 AUBORA FLOYD. 

and was driven away by a fierce growl from Bow- 
wow, who was little likely to brook any such 
Tnlgar rivalry. 

The man removed his felt hat, and tugged 
ceremoniously at a tuft of sandyiah hair which 
ornamented his low forehead. 

•* You might have spoken to a cove without all 
thfc here row, Miss Floyd," he said, in an injured 
tome. 
' Aurora looked at him indignantly. 

"Why did you stop me here?^ she said ; "why 
ocmldn't you write to me ?" 

"Because writin's never so much good as 
speakin', and because such young ladies as you 
are uncommon difiScult to get at. How did I 
know that your pa mightn't have put his hand 
upcm my letter, and there'd have been a pretty to 
do ? though I dessay , as for that, if I was to go up 
to the house, and ask the old gent for a trifle, he 
wouldn't be back'ard m givin' it. I dessay he'd 
be good for a fi'-pun note ; or a tenner, if it came 
to that." 

Aurora's eyes flashed sparks of fire as she 
turned upon the speaker. " If ever you dare to 
annoy my father you shall pay dearly for it, 



aurora's strange pensioner. 159 

Matthew Harrison," she said ; " not that / fear 
anything you can say, but I will not have him 
annoyed; I will not have him tormented. He 
has borne enough, and suffered enough, Heaven 
knows, without that. I will not have him harassed, 
and his best and.tenderest feelings made a markdi 
of, by such as you. I will not I" 

She stamped her foot upon the frosty ground as 
she spoke. Talbot Bulstrode saw and wondered 
at the gesture. He had half a mind to leave the 
carriage and join Aurora and her petitioner ; but 
the ponies were restless, and he knew that it 
would not do to abandon the reins to poor timid 
Lucy. 
} " You needn^t take on so. Miss Floyd," an- 
swered the man, whom Aurora had addressed as 
Matthew Harrison; ^'I'm sure I want to make 
thiogs pleasant to aU parties* All I ask is that 
you'll act a little liberal to a cove wot's come down 
in the world since you see him last. Lord, wot a 
world it is for ups and downs ! If it had been the 
summer season, I'd have had no needs to worrit 
you ; but what's the good of standin' at the top of 
Begent Street such weather as this with tarrier- 
pups and such likes? Old ladies has no eye for 



160 AURORA FLOYD. 

dawgs in the winter; and even the gents as 
cares for rat-catching is gettin' uncommon scarce. 
There aint nothink doin' on the turf whereby a 
chap can make a honest penny ; nor won't be, 
come the Craven Meetin'. I'd never have come 
anigh you, miss, if I hadn't been hard up ; and I 
know you'll act liberaL" 

" Act liberally 1" cried Aurora. " Good heavens ! 
if every guinea I have, or ever hope to have, 
could blot out the business that you trade upon, 
I'd open my hands alid let the moijey run through 
them as freely as so much water." 

'^^ It was only gck)d-natur'd of me to send you 
that ere paper, though, miss, eh?" said Mr. 
Matthew Harrison, plucking a dry twig from the 
tree nearest him, and chewing it for his delectation. 

Aurora and the man had w'alked slowly onward 
as they spoke, and were by this time at some dis- 
tance from the pony-carriage. 

Talbot Bulstrode was in a fever of restless 
impatience. 

" Do you know this pensioner of your cousin's, 
Lucy ?" he asked. 

" No, I can't remember his face. I don't think 
he belongs to Beckenham." 



aurora's strange pensioner. 161 

"Why, if I hadn't have sent you that ere VLife/ 
you wouldn't have know'd ; would you now ?" said 
the man. 

" No, no, perhaps not," answered Aurora. She 
had taken her porte-monnaie from her pocket, and 
Mr. Harrison was furtively regarding the little 
morocco receptacle with glistening eyes. 

"You don't ask me about any of the par- 
ticklars," he said. 

" No. What should I care to know of them ?" 

" No, certently," answered the man, suppressing 
a chuckle ; " you know enough, if it comes to that ; 
and if you wanted to know any more, I couldn't 
tell you ; for them few lines in the paper is all I 
could ever get hold of about the business. But I 
alius said it, and I alius will ; if a man as rides 
up'ards of eleven stone ** 

It seemed as if he were in a fairway of rambling 
on for ever so long, if Aurora had not checked him 
by an impatient frown. Perhaps he stopped all 
the more readily as she opened her purse at the 
same moment^ and he caught sight of the glitter- 
ing sovereigns lurking between leaves of crimson 
sUk. He had no very acute sense of colour ; but 
I am sure that he thought gold and crimson made 

VOL. I. H 



162 AURORA FLOYD. 

a pleasing contrast^ as he looked at the yellow coin 
in Miss Floyd's porte-monnaie. She poured the 
sovereigns into her own gloved palm, and then 
dropped the golden shower into Mr. Harrison's 
hands, which were hollowed into a species of 
homy basin for the reception of her bounty. The 
great trunk of an oak screened them from the 
observation of Talbot and Lucy, as Aurora gave 
the man this money. 

** You have no claim on me," she said, stopping 
him abruptly, as he began a declaration of his 
gratitude, "and I protest against your making a 
market of any past events which have come under 
your knowledge. Eemember, once and for ever, 
that I am not afraid of you ; and that if I consent 
to assist you, it is because I will not have my 
father annoyed. Let me have the address of some 
place where a letter may always find you, — ^you 
can put it into an envelope and direct it to me 
here, — and from time to time I promise to send 
you a moderate remittance ; sufficient to enable 
you to lead an honest life, if you, or any of your 
fletj are capable of doing so ; but I repeat, that if 
I give you this money as a bribe, it is only for niy 
Other's sake/' , 



• » 



aurora's strange peksioker. 163 

The man uttered some expression of thanks, 
looking at Aurora earnestly; but there was a 
stern shadow upon the dark feee that forbade any 
hope of conciliation. She was turning from him, 
followed by the mastiff, when the bandy-legged 
dog ran forward, whining and raising himself upon 
his hind legs to lick her hand. 

The expression of her face underwent an im- 
mediate change. She shrank from the dog, aiid 
he looked at her for a moment with a dim un- 
certainty in his blood-shot eyes ; then^ as convic- 
tion stole upon the brute mind, he burst into a 
joyous bark, frisking and capering about Miss 
Floyd's silk dress, and imprinting dusty impres- 
sions of his fore paws upon the rich fabric. 

"The pore hanimal knows yer, miss," said the 
man, deprecatingly ; •*you was never 'aughty to 
im. 

The mastiff Bow-wow made as if he would have 
torn up every inch of ground in Felden Woods at 
this juncture ; but Aurora quieted him with a look. 

** Poor Boxer !" she said ; " poor Boxer I so you 
know me, Boxer.'* 

**Lolxi, miss, there's no knowin' the faithfulness 
of them animals.'* 

M 2 



Mi JUJB0K4 nam. 

""Poor Bmerl I ilmik I dioiild like to have 
joiL Would joa sdl him, Huxifloii?^ 
The man shook his head* 
^ No, nuss,** he answered, ^ tiiaak joa IdndlT ; 
there aint mneh in the waj of dairgs as I'd 
n^nse to make a haigain abooL If yon wanted a 
mnto spannel, or a Bnasian setter, or a Hile of 
Skje, rd get him for yon and welcome, and ask 
notbin' lor mj trouble ; bat this here boll-tamer s 
father and mother and wife and £eunbly to me, and 
there aint money ^longh in yonr pa's bank to buy 
him, miss*** 

'*Well, well,** said Aurora, relentingly, "I 
know how feithful he is. Send me the address, 
and don't come to Felden again.** 

She returned to the carriage, and taking the 
reins from Talbot's hand, gare the restless ponies 
their bead ; the vehicle dashed past Mr. Matthew 
Harrison, who stood hat in hand, with his dog 
between his legs, until the party had gone by. 
Miss Floyd stole a glance, at her lover's face, and 
saw that Captain Bulstrode's countenance wore 
its darkest expression. The officer kept sulky 
silence till they reached the house, when he 
handed the two ladies irom the carriage and fol- 



I 



AUROIU'S STRANGE PENSIONER. l65 

lowed them across the hall. Aurora was on the 

4 

lowest step of the broad staircase before he spoke. 

"Aurora," he said, "one word before you go 
up-stairs." 

She turned and looked at him a little defiantly ; 
she was still very pale, and the fire with which 
her eyes had flashed upon Mr. Matthew Harrison, 
dc^-fancier and rat-catcher, had not yet died out 
of the dark orbs. Talbot Bolstrode opened the 
door of a long chamber under the picture-gallery 
—-half billiard-room, half library, and almost the 
pleasantest apartment in the house — and stood 
aside for Aurora to pass him. 

The young lady crossed the threshold as proudly 
as Marie Antoinette going to face her plebeian 
accusers. The room was empty. 

Miss Floyd seated herself in a low easy-chair by 
one of the two great fireplaces, and looked straight 
at the blaze. 

^' I want to ask you about that man, Aurora,*' 
Captain Bulstrode said, leaning over a prie^ieu 
chair, and playing nervously with the carved 
arabesques of the walnut- wood framework. 

"About which man?" 

This might have been prevarication in some 



166 AURORA FLOYD. 

• •• 

women ; from Aurora it was simply defiance^ as 
Talbot knew. 

" The man who spoke to you in the avenue just 
now. Who is he, and what was his business with 
you T Here Captain Bulstrode fairly broke down. 
He loved her, reader, he loved her, remember, and 
he was a coward. A coward under the influence 
of that most cowardly of all passions, Love ! — the 
passion that could leave a stain upon a Nelson's 
name; the passion which might have made a 
dastard of the bravest of the three hxmdred at 
Thermopylae, or the six hundred at Balaklava. 
He loved her, this imhappy young man, and he 
began to stammer, and hesitate, and apologize, 
shivering under the angry light in her wonderful 
eyes. "Believe me, Aurora, that I would not for 
the world play the spy upon your actions, or 
dictate to you the objects of your bounty. No, 
Aurora, not if my right to do so were stronger 
than it is, and I were twenty times your husband ; 
but that man, that disreputable-looking fellow who 
qK>ke to you just now — ^I don't think he is the 
sort of person you ought to assist." 

"I dare say not," she said; "I have no doubt 
I assist many people who ought by rights to die in 



aurora's, strakqi^ ?i;nsion£r. 167 

a workhouse or drop on the high-road ; but^ yoa 
see, if I stopped to question their deserts, they 
might die of starvation while I was making my 
inquiries ; so perhaps it's better to throw away a 
few shillings upon some unhappy creature who is 
wicked enough to be hungry, and not good enough 
to deserve to have anything given him to eat" 

There wa3 a recklessness about this e^ech that 
jarred upon Talbot, but he could not very wdl 
take objection to it ; besides, it was leading away 
fi'om the subject upon which he was so eager to be 
satisfied. 

" But that man, Aurora — ^who is he ?" 

"A dog-jGancier." 

Talbot shuddered. 

"I thought he was something horrible," he 
murmured ; ^' but what> in Heaven's name, could 
he want of you, Aurora?" 

" What most of my petitioners want^" she an* 
swered ; " whether it's the curate of a new chapel 
with medisBval decorations, who wants to rival our 
Lady of Bons-secours upon one of the hills about 
Norwood; or a laundress, who has burnt a week's 
washing, and wants the means to make it good ; 
or a lady of fashion, who is about to inaugurate a 



168 AURORA FLOYD. 

home for the cbfldren of indigent Incifer-match 
sellers ; or a lecturer upon political economy, or 
Shelley and Bjnron, or upon Charles Dickens and 
the Modem Humorists^ who is going to hold forth at 
Croydon : they all want the same thing ; money ! 
If I tell the curate that my principles are evan- 
gelical, and that I can't pray sincerely if there are 
candlesticks on the altar, he is not the less glad 
of my hundred pounds. If I inform the lady of 
fashion that I have peculiar opinions about the 
orphans of lucifer-match sellers, and cherish a 
theory of my own against the education of the 
masses, she will shrug her shoulders deprecatingly, 
but will take care to let me Imow that any do- 
nation Miss Floyd may be pleased to afford will 
be equally acceptable. K I told them that I had 
committed half a dozen murders, or that I had a 
silver statue of the winner of last year's Derby 
erected on an altar in my dressing-room, and did 
daily and nightly homage to it, they would take 
my money and thank me kindly for it, as that 
man did just now." 

*' But one word, Aurora : does the man belong 
to this neighbourhood ?" 

" No." 




4 



auboba's stbanoe pensioner. 160 

" How, then, did you come to know him ?" 

She looked at him for a moment ; steadily, un- 
flinchingly, with a thoughtful expression in that 
ever-changing countenance ; looked as if she were 
mentally debating some point. Then rising sud- 
denly, she gathered her shawl about her, and 
walked towards the door. She paused upon the 
threshold, and said — 

"This cross^uestioning is scarcely pleasant. 
Captain Bulstrode. If I choose to give a five- 
pound note to any person who may ask me for it, 
I expect full licence to do so ; and I will not 
submit to be called to account for my actions — 
even by you." 

" Aurora !'* 

The tenderly reproachful tone struck her to the 
heart. 

" You may believe, Talbot," she said, — " you 
must surely believe that I know too well the value 
of your love to imperil it by word or deed — ^you 
must believe this." 



no AUROBA FLOYD. 



CHAPTER Vm. 

FOOB JOHN MELLISH COMES BACK AGAIN. 

John Mellibh grew weary of the great city of 
Paris. Better loye, and ccmtentment, and a cmst 
in a mansardey than stalled oxen or other costly 
food in the loftiest saloons au premier, with the 
most obsequious waiters to do us homage, re- 
pressing so much as a snule at our insular idiom. 
He grew heartily weary of the Bue do lUYoh', the 
gilded railings of the TuUeries gardens, and the 
lefifless trees behind them. He was weary of the 
Place de la Conc(»:de, and'the Champs Elys^, 
and the rattle of the hoo& of the troop about his 
Imperial Highnesses carriage, when Napoleon 
the Third, or the baby prince, took his airing. 
The plot was yet a-hatching which was to come so 
soon to a climax in the Eue Lepelletier. He was 
tired of the broad Boulevards, and the theatres. 



POOR JOHN MELLISH COMES BACK AGAIN. 171 

and the caf&, and the glove-shops — ^tired of star- 
ing at the jewellers' windows in the Kue de la 
Faix, picturing to himself the face of Aurora 
Floyd under the diamond and emerald tiaras 
displayed therein. He had serious thoughts at 
times of buying a stove and a basket of charcoal, 
and asphyxiating himself quietly in the great 
gilded saloon at Meurice's. What was the use of 
his money, or his dogs, or his horses, or his broad 
acres? All these put together would not purchase 
Aurora Floyd. What was the good of life, if it 
came to that, since the banker's daughter refused 
to share it with him ? Eemember that this big, 
blue-eyed, curly-haired John Mellish had been 
from his cradle a spoiled child, — spoiled by poor 
relations and parasites, servants and toadies, from 
the first hour to the thirtieth year of his existence, 
— and it seemed such a very hard thing that this 
beautiful woman should be denied to him. Had 
he been an eastern potentate, he would have sent 
for his vizier, and would have had that official 
bow-strung before his eyes, and so made an end of 
it ; but being merely a Yorkshire gentleman and 
landowner, he had no more to do but to bear his 
burden quietly. As if he had ever borne any- 



172 AURORA FLOYD. 

thing quietly 1 He flung half the weight of his 
grief upon his valet; until that functionary dreaded 
the sound of Miss Floyd's name, and told a fellow- 
servant in confidence that his master " made such 
a howling about that young woman as he offered 
marriage to at Brighton, that there was no bear- 
ing him." The end of it all was, that one night 
John Mellish gave sudden orders for the striking 
of his tents, and early the next morning departed 
for the Great Northern Eailway, leaving only the 
ashes of his fires behind him. 

It was only natural to suppose that Mr. Mellish 
would have gone straight to his country residence, 
where there was much business to be done by 
him: foals to be entered for coming races, trainers 
and stable-boys to be settled with, the planning 
and laying down of a proposed tan-gallop to be 
carried out, and a racing stud awaiting the eye of 
the master. But instead of going from the Dover 
Railway Station to the Great Northern Hotel, 
eating his dinner, and starting for Doncaster by 
the express, Mr. Mellish drove to the Gloucester 
Coffee-house, and there took up his quarters, for 
the purpose, as he said, of seeing the Cattle-show. 
He made a melancholy pretence of driving to 




POOH JOHN MELLISH COMES BACK AGAIN. 173 

Baker Street in a Hansom cab, and roamed hither 
and thither for a quarter of an hour, staring dis- 
mally into the pens, and then fled away precipi- 
tately from the Yorkshire gentlemen-farmers, who 
gave him hearty greeting. He left the Gloucester 
the next morning in a dog-cart, and drove straight 
to Beckenham. Archibald Floyd, who knew no- 
thing of this young Yorkshireman's declaration 
and rejection, had given him a hearty invitation 
to Felden Woods. Why shouldn't he go there ? 
Only to make a morning call upon the hospitable 
banker ; not to see Aurora ; only to take a few 
long respirations of the air she breathed before he 
went back to Yorkshire. 

Of course he knew nothing of Talbot Bulstrode's 
happiness ; and it had been one of the chief con- 
solations of his exile to remember that that gen- 
tleman had put forth in the same vessel, and had 
been shipwrecked along with him. "^ 

He was ushered into the billiard-room, where 
he found Aurora Floyd seated at a little table 
near the fire, making a pencil copy of a proof en- 
graving of one of Bosa Bonheur's pictures, while 
Talbot Bulstrode sat by her side preparing he 
pencils. 



174* AUBORA FLOYD. 

We feel instinctively that the man who cuts 
lead-pencils, or holds a skein of silk upon his out- 
stretched hands, or carries lap-dogs, opera-cloaks, 
camp-stools, or parasols, is " engaged." Even 
John Mellish had learned enough to know this. 
He breathed a sigh so loud as to be heard by Lucy 
and her mother seated by the other fireplace, — a 
sigh that was on the rerge of a groan, — and then 
held out his hand to Miss Floyd. Not to Talbot 
Bulstrode. He had rague memories of Eoman 
legends floating ia his brain, legends of super- 
human generosity and classic fielf-abnegation ; but 
he could not have shaken hands vidth that dark- 
haired young Cornishman, though the tenure of the 
Mellish estate had hung upon the sacrifice. He 
could not do it. He seated himself a few paces 
from Aurora and her lover, twisting his hat about 
in his hot, nervous hands until the brim was well- 
nifh limp ; and was powerless to utter one 
sentence^ even so much as some poor pitiful re- 
mark about the weather. 

He was a great spoiled baby of thirty years of 
age ; and I am afraid that, if the stern truth must 
be told, he saw Aurora Floyd across a mist, that 
blurred and distorted the bright face before his 




rOOU JOHN MELLISti (50MES "BACK AGAIN. 175* 

eyes. Lucy Floyd came to his relief, by carrying 
him off to introduce him to her mother ; and kind- 
hearted Mrs. Alexander was delighted with his 
frank, fair English face. He had the good fortune 
to stand with his back to the light, so that neither 
of the ladies detected that foolish mist in his blue 
eyes. 

Archibald Floyd would not hear of his visitor's 
returning to town either that night or the next 
day. 

" You must spend Christmas with us,** he said, 
^*^and see the New Year in, before you go back to 
Yorkshire. I have all my children about me at 
this season, and it is the only time that Felden 
seems like an old man's home. Your friend Bul- 
strode stops with us" (Mellish winced as he 
received this intelligence), " and I sha'n't think it 
friendly if you refuse to join our party." 

What a pitiful coward this John Mellish must 
have been to accept the banker's invitation, and 
send the Newport Pagnell back to the Gloucester, 
and suffer himself to be led away by Mr. Floyd's 
own man to a pleasant chamber, a few doors from 
the chintz-rooms occupied by Talbot ! But I have 
add before, that love is a cowardly passion, j It is 



176 AURORA FLOYD. 

like the "toothache; the bravest and strongest suc- 
cumb to it, and howl aloud under the torture. I 
don't suppose the Iron Duke would have been 
aahamed to own that he objected to having his 
teeth out. I have heard of a great fighting man 
who could take punishment better than any other 
of the genii of the ring, but who fainted away at 
the first grip of the dentist's forceps. John Mellish 
consented to stay at Felden, and he went between 
the lights into Talbot's dressing-room, to expostu- 
late with the captain upon his treachery. 

Talbot did his best to console his doleful visi- 
tant. 

^* There are more women than one in the world," 
he said, after John had unbosomed himself of his 
grief— he didn't think this, the hypocrite, though 
he said it — " there are more women than one, my 
dear Mellish ; and there are many very charming 
and estimable girls, who would be glad to win the 
affections of such a fellow as you." 

"I hate estimable girls," said Mr. Mellish; 
" bother my affectidns ! nobody will ever win my 
affections ; but I love her, I love that beautiful 
black-eyed creature down-stairs, who looks at you 
with two flashes of lightning, and rides like young 



POOR JOHN HELLISH COMES BACK AGAIN. 177 

Challoner in a cloth habit ; I love her, Bulstrod^, 
and you told me that she'd refused you, and that 
you "were going to leave Brighton by the eight 
o'clock express, and you didn't; and you sneaked 
back and made her a second offer, and she ac- 
cepted you, and, damme, it wasn't fair play." 

Having said which, Mr. Mellish flung himself 
upon a chair, whidi creaked under his weight, and 
fell to poking the fire furiously. 

It was hard for poor Talbot to have to excuse 
himseK for having won Aurora's hand. He could 
not very well remind John Mellish that if Miss 
Floyd had accepted him, it was perhaps because 
she preferred him to the honest Yorkshireman. 
To John the matter never presented itself in this 
light. The spoiled child had been cheated out of 
that toy above all other toys, iipon the possession 
of which he had set his foolish heart. It was as if 
he had bidden for some crack horse at Tattersall's, 
in fair and open competition with a friend, who 
had gone back after the sale to outbid him in some 
imderhand fashion. He could not understand that 
there had been no dishonesty in Talbot's conduct, 
and he was highly indignant when that gentleman 
ventured to hint to him that perhaps, on the 

VOL. I. N 



178 AURORA FLOYa 

whole, it would have been wiser to have kept away 
from Felden Woods. 

Talbot Bulstrode had avoided any further allu- 
sion to Mr. Matthew Harrison the dog-fancier ; and 
this, the first dispute between the lovers, had 
ended in the triumph of Aurora. 

Miss Floyd was not a little embarrassed by the 
presence of John Mellish, who roamed disconso- 
lately about the big rooms, seating himself ever 
and anon at one of the tables to peer into the 
lenses of a stereoscope, or to take up some gor- 
geously-bound volimie and drop it on the carpet 
in gloomy absence of mind, and who sighed 
heavily when spoken to, and was altogether far 
from pleasant company. Aurora's warm heart 
was touched by the piteous spectacle of this re- 
jected lover, and she sought him out once or 
twice, and talked to ^^him about his racing stud, 
and asked him how he liked the hunting in 
Surrey ; but John changed from red to white, 
and from hot to cold, when she spoke to him, and 
fled away from her with a scared and ghastly 
aspect, which would have been grotesque had it 
not been so painfully real. 

But by-and-by John found a more pitiful 



POOR JOHN HELLISH COMES BACK AGAIN. 170 

listener to his sorrows than ever Talbot Bulstrode 
had been; and this gentle and compassionate 
listener was no other than Lucy Floyd, to whom 
the big Yorkshireman turned in his trouble. Did 
he know, or did- he guess, by some wondrouB 
clairvoyance, that her griefs bore a common Uke- 
ness to his o^vn, and that she was just the one 
person, of all others at Feldea Woods, to be 
pitiful to him and patient with him ? He was by 
no means proud, this transpaxent, boyish, babyish 
good fellow. Two days after his arrival at Felden, 
he told all to poor Lucy. 

''I suppose you know, Miss FJoyd," he said, 
"that 'your cousin rejected me.. Yes, of course 
you do; I believe she rejected Bulstrode about 
the same time ; but some men haven't a ha'porth 
of pride : I must say I think the captain acted 
like a sneak." 

A sneak ! Her idol, her adored, her demi-god^ 
her dark-haired and gray-eyed divinity, to be 
spoken of thus ! She turned upon Mr. Mellisl^ 
with her fair cheeks flushed into a pale glow of 
anger, and told him that Talbot had a right to do 
what he had done, and that whatever Talbot did 
was right. 

N 2 



180 AURORA FLOYD. 

Like most men whose reflective faculties are 
entirely undevelopedj John Mellish was blessed 
with a sufficiently rapid perception ; a perception 
sharpened just then by that peculiar sympathetic 
prescience, that marvellous clairvoyance of which 
I have spoken ; and in those few indignant words, 
and that angry flush, he read poor Lucy's secret : 
she loved Talbot Bulstrode as he loved Aurora— 
hopelessly. 

How he admired this fragile girl, who was 
frightened of horses and dogs, and who shivered if 
a breath of the winter air blew across the heated 
haJl, and who yet bore her burden with this quiet, 
uncomplaining patience! while he, who weighed 
fourteen stone, and could ride forty miles across 
country with the bitterest blasts of December 
blowing in his face, was powerless to endure his 
affliction. It comforted him to watch Lucy, and 
to read in those faint signs and tokens, which had 
escaped even a mother's eye, the sad history 
of her unrequited affection. 

Poor John was too good-natured and unselfish 
to hold out for ever in the dreary fortress of 
despair^which he had built up for his habitation ; 
and on Christmas-eve, when there weie certain 



POOR JOHN HELLISH COMES BACK AGAIN. 181 

rejoicings at Felden, held in especial honour of 
the younger visitors, he gave way, and joined in 
their merriment, and was more boyish than thot 
youngest of them, burning his fingers with blazing 
raisins, suffering his eyes to be bandaged at the 
will of noisy little players at blindman's-buff^- 
undergoing ignominious penalties in their games 
of forfeits, performing alternately innkeepers, 
sheriff's officers, policemen, clergymen, and 
justices, in the acted charades, lifting the little 
ones who wanted to see " de top of de Kitmat 
tee " in his sturdy arms, and making himself 
otherwise agreeable and useful to young people of 
from three to fifteen years of ag# ; until at last, 
under the influence of all this juvenile gaiety, and 
perhaps two or three glasses of Moselle, he boldly 
kisaed Aurora Floyd beneath the branch of 
mistletoe, hanging, "for this night only," in the 
great hall at Felden Woods. 

And having done this, Mr. Mellish fairly lost 
his wits, and was " off his head *' for the rest of 
the evening ; making speeches to the little ones 
at the supper-table, and proposing Mr. Archibald 
Floyd and the commercial interests of Great 
Britain, with three times three; leading the 



182 AtTRORA FLOYD. 

chorus of tliose tiny {treble voices with his own 
sonorous bass ; and weeping freely — he never 
quite knew why — ^behind his table-fiapkin. It 
was through an atmosphere of tears, and spark- 
ling wines, and gas, and hot-house flowers, that he 
saw Aurora Floyd, looking, ah, how lovely ! in those 
simple robes of white which so much became her, 

and with a garland of artificial holly round her 
head. The spiked leaves and the scarlet berries 
formed themselves into a crown — I think, indeed, 
that a cheese-plate would have been transformed 
into a diadem, if Miss Floyd had been pleased to 
put it on her head— and she looked like the 
genius of Christmas : something bright and beau- 
tiful; too beautiful to come more than once a 
year. 

When the clocks were striking 2 a.m., long 
after the little ones had been carried away 
muffled up in opera-cloaks, terribly sleepy, and 
I'm afraid in some instances under the influence 
of strong drink, — when the elder guests had all 
retired to rest, and the lights, with a few excep- 
tions, were fled, the garlands dead, and all but 
Talbot and John Mellish departed, the two young 
inen walked up and down the long billiard-room, 



POOR JOHCT MELLISH COMES BACK AGAIN. 183 

in the red glow of the two declining fires, and 
talked to each other confidentially. It was the 
morning of Christmas-day, and it wonld have been 
strange to be nnfi-iendly at such a time. 

" If you'd fallen in love with the other one, Bul- 
strode," said John, clasping his old schoolfellow 
by the hand, and staring at him pathetically, "I 
could have looked upon you as a brother; she's 
better suited to you, twenty thousand times better 
adapted to you, than her cousin, and you ought to 
have married her — ^in common courtesy — I mean 
to say as an honourable — having very much com- 
promised yourself by your attentions — Mrs. Whats- 
hemame^ — the companion — Mrs. Powell — said so 
— you ought to have married her." 

" Married her ! Married whom ?" cried Talbot 
rather savagely, shaking off his friend's hot grasp, 
and allowing Mr. Mellish to sway backward upon 
the heels of his varnished boots in rather an' 
alarming manner. ** Who do you mean ?" 

"The sweetest girl in Christendom — except 
one," exclaimed John, clasping his hot hands aiid 
elevating his dim blue eyes to the ceiling ; ^' the 
loveliest girl in Christendom, except one — ^Lucy 
Floyd." ^ 



184 AURORA FLOYD. 

"Lucy Floyd r 

** Yes, Lucy ; the sweetest girl in 



» 



" Who says that I ought to marry Lucy Floyd 1" 

" She says so — ^no, no, I don't mean that ! I 
mean," said Mr. Mellish, sinking his voice to a 
solemn whisper, — " I mean that Lucy Floyd loves 
you ! She didn't tell me so— oh, no, bless your 
soul, — she never uttered a word upon the subject ; 
but she loves you. Yes," continued John, pushing 
his friend away from him with both hands, and 
staring at him as if mentally taking his pattern 
for a suit of clothes, " that girl loves you, and has 
loved you all along. I am not a fool, and I give 
you my word and honour that Lucy Floyd loves 
you." 

"Not a fool!" cried Talbot; ** you're worse 
Uian a fool, John Mellish — you're drunk !" 

He turned upon his heel contemptuously, and 
taking a candle from a table near the door, lighted, 
it, and strode out of the room. 

John stood rubbing his hands through his curly 
hair, and staring helplessly after the captain. 

" This is the reward a fellow gets for doing a 
generous thing," he said, as he thrust his own 
candle into the burning coals, ignoring any easier 



POOR JOHN HELLISH COMES BACK AGAIN, 185 

mode of lighting it. " It's hard, but I suppose it's 
human nature." 

Talbot Bulstrode went to bed in a very bad 
humour. Could it be true that Lucy loved him ? 
Could this chattering Yorkshireman have dis- 
covered a secret which had escaped the captain's 
penetration ? He remembered how, only a diort 
time before, he had wished that this fair-haired 
girl might fall in love with him, and now all was 
trouble and confusion. Guinevere was lady of his 
heart, and poor Elaine was sadly in the way. 
Mr. Tennyson's wondrous book had not been 
given to the world in the year fifty-seven, or no 
doubt poor Talbot would have compared himself 
to the knight whose ** honour rooted in dishonour 
stood." Had he been dishonourable? Had he 
compromised himself by his attentions to Lucy ? 
Had he deceived that fair and gentle creature? 
The down pillows in the chintz chamber gave no 
rest to his weary head that night ; and when he 
fell asleep in the late daybreak, it was to dream 
horrible dreams, and to see in a vision Aurora 
Floyd standing on the brink of a clear pool of 
water in a woody recess at Felden, and pointing 
down through its crystal surface to the corpse of 



186 AURORA FLOYD. 

Lucy, lying pale and still amidst lilies and cluster- 
ing aquatic plants, whose long tendrils entwined 
themselves with the feir golden hair. 

He heard the splash of the water in that terrible 
dream, and awoke, to find his yalet breaking the 
ice in his bath in the adjoining room. His per- 
plexities about poor Lucy vanished m the broad 
daylight, and he laughed at a trouble which must 
have grown out of his own vanity. Whiit was he, 
that young ladies should fall in love with him? 
What a weak fool he must have been to have 
believed for one moment in the drunken babble 
of John Mellish ! So he dismissed the image of 
Aurora's cousin fir^m his mind, and had eyes, ears, 
and thought only for Aurora herself, who drove 
him to Beckenham church in her basket-carriage, 
and sat by his side in the banker's great square pew. 

Alas, I fear he heard very little of the sermon 
.hat was preached that day ; but, for all that, I 
declare that he was a good and devout man : a 
man whom God had blest with the gift of earnest 
belief; a man who took all blessings from the 
hand of God reverently, almost fearfully ; and as 
he bowed his head at the end of that Christmas 
service of rejoicing and thanksgiving, he thanked 



POOR JOHN HELLISH COMES BACK AGAIN, 187 

Heaven for liis overflowing cup of gladness, and 
prayed that he might become worthy of so mnch 
happiness. | 

He had a vague fear that he was too happy ; 
too much bound up heart and soul in the dark- 
eyed woman by his side. If she were to die ! K 
she were to be false to him ! He turned sick and 
dizzy at the thought; and even in that sacred 
temple the Devil whispered to him that there 
were still pools, loaded pistols, and other certain 
remedies for such calamities as those, — so wicked 
as well as cowardly a passion is this terrible fever, 
Love !^ 

• The day was bright and clear, the light snow 
whitening the ground; every line of hedge-top 
and tree cut sharply out against the cold blue of 
the winter sky. The banker proposed that they 
should send home the carriages, and walk down 
the hill to Feld^i; so Talbot Bulstrode offered 
Aurora his arm, only too glad of the chance of a 
tite-d'tSte with his betrothed. 

John Mellish walked with Archibald Floyd, 
with whom the Yorkshireman was an especial 
favourite; and Lucy was lost amid a group of 
brothers, sisters, and cousins. 



188 AUBORA FLOYD. 

" We were so busy all yesterday with the little 
people," said Talbot, "that I forgot to tell you, 
Aurora, that I had had a letter from my mother." 

Miss Floyd looked up at him with her brightest 
glance. She was always pleased to hear anything 
about Lady Bulstrode. 

"Oh course there is very little news in the 
letter," added Talbot, " for there is rarely much 
to tell at Bulstrode. And yet — ^yes — there is one 
piece of news which concerns yourself." J 

** Which concerns me ?" 

"Yes, You remember my cousin, Constance 
TrevyUian ?" 

"Y-es— " 

"She has returned from Paris, her education 
finished at last, and she, I believe, all-accomplished, 
and has gone to spend Christmas at Bulstrode. 
Good heavens, Aurora I what is the matter?" 

Nothing very much, apparently. Her face had 
grown as white as a sheet of letter-paper ; but the 
hand upon his arm did not tremble. Perhaps, 
had he taken especial notice of it, he would have 
found it pretematurally still. 

" Aurora, what is the matter ?" 

" Nothing. Why do you ask ?" 




POOR JOHN HELLISH COMES BACK AGAIN. 189 

** Your face is as pale as ^" 

" It is the cold, I suppose," she said, shivering. 
** Tell me about your cousin, this Miss Trevyllian ; 
when did she go to Bulstrode Castle?" 

" She was to arrive the day before yesterday. 
My mother was expecting her when she wrote." 

" Is she a favourite of Lady Bulstrode's ?" 

" No very especial favourite. My mother likes 
her well enough ; but Constance is rather a frivo- 
lous girl" 

"The day before yesterday," said Aurora; 
**Miss Trevyllian was to arrive the day before yes- 
terday. The letters from Cornwall are delivered 
at Felden early in the afternoon ; are they not ?" 

« Yes, dear." 

"You wiU have a letter from your mother to- 
day, Talbot ?" 

" A letter to-day I oh, no, Aurora, she never 
writes two days running ; seldom more than once 
a week." 

Miss Floyd did not make any answer to this, 
nor did her face regain its natural hue during the 
whole of the homeward walk. She was very 
silent, only replying in the briefest manner to 
Talbot's inquiries. 



190 '^ AURORA FLOYD^ 

*^ " I am sure that you are ill, Aurora," he said, 
aa they ascended the terrace steps, 

*' I am iU." 

"But, dearest, what is it? Let me tell Mrs, 
Alexander, or Mrs. PowelL Let me go back to 
Beckenham for the doctor." 

She looked at him with a mournful earnestness 
in her eyes. 

" My foolish Talbot," she said, " do you remem- 
ber what Macbeth said to his doctor ? There are 
diseases that cannot be ministered ta Let me 
alone; you will know soon enough — ^you will 
know yery soon, I dare say." 

"But, Aurora, what do you mean by this? 
What can there be upon your mind ?" 

*^Ah, what indeed 1 Let me alone, let me 
alone. Captain Bulstrode." 

He had caught her hand ; but she broke from 
him, and ran up the staircase, in the direction of 
her own apartments, 

Talbot hurried to Lucy, with A pale, frightened, 
face. 

"Your cousin is ill, Lucy," he said; "go to 
her, for Heaven's sake, and see what is wrong." 
, Lucy obeyed immediately ; but she fo^nd the 



POOR JOHK HELLISH COMES BACK AGAIN. 191 

door of Miss Floyd's room locked against her; 
and when she called to Aurora, and implored to be 
admitted, that yomig lady cried out — 

" Go away, Lucy Floyd ! go away, and leave 
me to myself, unless you want to drive me mad !" 



192 AURORA FLOYD. 



CHAPTER IX, 

HOW TALBOT BULSTRODE SPENT HIS CHRISTMAS. 

There was no more happiness for Talbot Bulstrode 
that day. He wandered from room to room, till 
he was as weary of that exercise as the young 
lady in Monk Lewis's ' Castle Spectre ;' he roamed 
forlornly hither and thither, hoping to find Aurora, 
now in the billiard-room, now in the drawing- 
room. He loitered in the haU, upon the shallow 
pretence of looking at barometers and thermo- 
meters, in order to listen for the opening and 
shutting of Aurora's door. All the doors at Felden 
Woods were perpetually opening and shutting 
that afternoon, as it seemed to Talbot Bulstrode. 
He had no excuse for passing the doors of Miss 
Floyd's apartments, for his own rooms lay at the 
opposite angle of the house ; but he lingered on 
the broad staircase, looking at the furniture- 
pictures upon the walls, and not seeing one line in 



TALBOT BULSTRODE's CHEISTMAS. 193 

hese Wardour-Street productions. He had hoped 
that Aurora would appear at luncheon ; but that 
dismal meal had been eaten without her ; and the 
merry laughter and pleasant talk of the family 
assembly had sounded far away to Talbot's ears — 
far away across some wide ocean of doubt and 
confusion. 

He passed the afternoon in this wretched man- 
ner, unobserved by any one but Lucy, who watched 
him furtively from her distant seat, as he roamed 
in and out of the drawing-room. Ah, how many 
a man is watched by loving eyes whose light he 
never sees ! How many a man is cared for by a 
tender heart whose secret he never learns! A 
little after dusk, Talbot Bulstrode went to his 
room to dress. It was some time before the bell 
would ring ; but he would dress early, he thought, 
so as to make sure of being in the drawing-room 
when Aurora came down. 

He took no light with him, for there were 
always wax-candles upon the chimney-piece in his 
room. 

It was almost distrk in that pleasant chintz 
chamber, for the fire had been lately replenished, 
and there was no blaze ; but he could just distin- 

VOL. I, 



194 AURORA. FLOTD. 

goish a whitp patch upon the green-cloth cover of 
the writing-table. The white patch was a letter. 
He stirred the black mass of coal in the grate^ 
and a bright flame went dancing up the chimney, 
ma]dng the room as light as day. He took the 
letter in one hand, while he lighted one of the 
candles on the chimney-piece with the other. 
The letter was from his mother.. Aurora Floyd 
liad told him that he would receive such a letter. 
What did it all mean? The gay flowers and birds 
upon the papered walls spun round him as he tore 
«open the envelope. I firmly believe that we have 
;a semi-supernatural prescience of the coming of 
all misfortone ; a projdietic instinct, which tells 
tls that such a letter, or such a messenger, carries 
evil tidings. Talbot Bulstrode had that prescience 
as he unfolded the paper in his hands. The 
horrible trouble was before him; a brooding 
shadow, with a veiled face, ghastly and unde- 
fined ; butftt was there. 

" My dear Talbot, — ^I know that the letter I 
am about to write wiU distress and perplex you ; 
but my duty lies not the less plainly before me. 
I fear that your heart is much involved in your 
engagement to Miss Floyd." The evil tidings 



TALBOT BULSTRODE'S CHRISTMAS. 195 

concerned Aurora, then ; the broodijig shadow was 
slowly lifting its dark veil, and the face of her he 
loved best on earth appeared behind it. " But I 
know," continued that pitiless letter, "that the 
sense of honour is the strongest part of your nature, 
and that, however you may have loved this giril ** 
(O God, she spoke of his love in the past !), "yoa 
will not suffer yourself to be entrapped into a 
false position through any weakness of affeetioiL 
There is some mystery about the life of Aurora 
Floyd." 

J This sentence was at the bottom of the first 
page ; and before Talbot BuLstrode's shaking hand 
could turn the lea^ every doubt, every fear, every 
presentiment he had ever felt^ flashed back upon 
him with preternatural distinctness. 

"Constance Treyyllian came here yesterday; 
and you may imagine that in the course of the 
evening you were spoken of, and your engagement 
discussed." 

A curse upon their jErivolous women's gossip! 
Talbot crushed the letter in his hand, and was 
about to fling it £rom him; but, no, it mtiat be 
read. The shadow of doubt must be fiaced, and 
wrestled with, and vanquished, or there was no 

2 



196 AURORA FLOYD. 

more peace upon this earth for him. He went on 
reading the letter. 

**I told Constance that Miss Floyd had been 
educated in the Eue St.-Dominique, and asked if 
she remembered her. * What !' she said, * is it the 
Miss Floyd whom there was such a fuss about? the 
Miss Floyd who ran away from school?* And 
she told me, Talbot, that a Miss Floyd was brought 
to the Desmoiselles Lespard by her father last 
June twelyemonth, and that less than a fortnight 
after arriving at the school she disappeared ; h^* 
disappearance of course causing a great sensation 
and an immense deal of talk among the other 
pupils, as it was said she had run away. The 
matter was hushed up as much as possible ; but you 
know that girls will talk, and from what Constance 
tells me, I imagine that very unpleasant things 
were said about Miss Floyd. Now you say that 
the banker's daughter only returned to Felden 
Woods in September last. Where was she in the 
interval ?" 

He read no more. One glance told him that 
the rest of the letter consisted of motherly cau- 
tions, and admonitions as to how he was to act in 
this perplexing business. • 




TALBOT BULSTRODE's CHRISTMAS, 197 

He thrust the crampled paper into his bosom^ 
and dropped into a chair by the hearth. 

It was so, then ! There was a mystery in the 
life of this woman. The doubts and suspicions, 
the undefined fears and perplexities, which had 
held him back at the first, and caused him to 
wrestle against his love, had not been unfounded. 
There was good reason for them all, ample reason 
for them; as there is for every instinct which 
Providence puts into our hearts. A black wall 
rose up round about him, and shut him for ever 
fix>m the woman he loved ; this woman whom he 
loved, so far from wisely, so fearfully well ; this 
woman, for whom he had thanked God in the 
church only a few hours before. And she was to 
have been his wife ; the mother of his children, 
perhaps. He clasped his cold hands over his face 
and sobbed aloud. Do not despise him for those 
drops of anguish : they were the virgin tears of his 
mtanhood. Never since infancy had his eyes been 
wet before. Grod forbid that such tears as those 
should be shed more than once in a lifetime ! The 
agony of that moment was not to be lived through 
twice. The hoarse sobs rent and tore his breast as 
if his flesh had been hacked by a rusty sword ; and 



198 AURORA FLOFD. 

when he took his wet hands from his face, he won- 
dered that they were not red ; for it seemed to him 
as if he had been weeping blood. What should 
he do? 

Go to Aurora, and ask her the meaning of that 
letter? Yes; the course was plain enough. A 
tumult of hope rushed back upon him, and swept 
away his terror. Why^was he so ready to doubt 
her? What a pitiful coward he was to suspect 
her — ^to suspect this girl, whose transparent soul 
had been so freely unveiled to him ; whose every 
accent was truth ! For in his intercourse with 
Aurora, the quality which he had learned most to 
reverence in her nature was its sublime candour. 
He almost laughed at the recollection of his 
mother's solemn letter. It was so like these 
snnple country people, whose lives had been 
boanded by the natiow limita of a Cornish village 
— 4t was so Uke them to make mountains out of 
the veriest mole-hills. What was there so wonder- 
ful in that which had occurred? The spoiled 
diildy the wilfiil heiress^ had grown tired of a 
foreign Bchool, and had ran away. Her fether, 
not wishing the girlish escapade to foe known, had 
placed her somewhere else, and had kept her toilly 



TALBOT BXJLSTRODE*S CHRISTMAS. 199 

a secret ' What was there from first to last in the 
whole a£fair |that was not perfectly natural and 
probable, the exceptional circumstances of the 
case duly considered ? 

He could fancy Aurora, with her cheeks in a 
flame, and her eyes flashing lightning, flinging a 
page of blotted exercises into the face of her 
French master, and running out of the school- 
room, amid a tumult of ejaculatory babble. The 
beautiftd, impetuous creature ! There is nothing 
a man cannot admire in the woman he loves, and 
Talbot was half inclined to admire Aurora lor 
havmg run away from schooL 

The first dinner-bell had rung during Captain 
Bulstrode's agony; so the corridors and rooms 
were deserted when he went to look for Amrora, 
with his mother's letter in his breast. 

She was not in the billiard-room or the draw- 
ing-room, but he found her at last in a little inner 
chamber at the end of the house, with a bay- 
window looking out over the park. The room 
was dimly lighted by a shaded lamp, and Miss 
Floyd was seated in the uncurtained window, with 
her elbow resting on a cushioned ledge, looking 
out at the steel-cold wintry sky and the whitened 



"200 AUBOBA FLOTD. 

landscape. She was dressed in black ; her iace^ 
neck^ and arms gleaming marble-white against the 
sombre hue of her dress ; and her attitude was as 
still as that of a statue. 

She neither stirred nor looked round when 
Talbot entered the room. 

" My dear Aurora," he said, " I have been look- 
ing for you everywhere." 

She shivered at the sound of his voice. 

" You wanted to see me ?" 

"Yes, dearest. I want you to explain some- 
thing to me. A foolish business enough, no 
doubt, my darling, and, of course, very easily ex- 
plained; but, as your future husband, I have a 
right to ask for an explanation; and I know, 
I know, Aurora,, that you will give it in all 
candour." 

She did not speak, although Talbot paused for 
some moments, awaiting her answer. He could 
only see her profile, dimly lighted by the wintry 
sky. He could not see the mute pain, the white 
anguish, in that youthful face. 

"I have had a letter from my mother, and 
there is something in that letter which I wish you 
to explain. Shall I read it to you, dearest ?" 



TALBOT BULSTRODE's CHRISTMAS. 201 

His voice faltered upon the endearing ex- 
pression, and he remembered afterwards that it 
was the last time he had ever addressed her with 
a lover's tenderness. The day came when she 
had need of his compassion, and when he gave it 
freely ; but that moment sounded the death-knell 
of Love. In that moment the gulf yawned, and 
the cMs were rent asunder. 

" Shall I read you the letter, Aurora ?'* 

" If you please." 

He took the crumpled epistle from his bosom, 
and, bending over the lamp, read it aloud to 
Aurora. He fully expected at every sentence that 
she would iaterrupt him mth some eager ex- 
planation ; but she was silent until he had finished, 
and even then she did not speak. 

" Aurora, Aurora, is this true ?'* 

"Perfectly true." 

"But why did you run away from the Eue 
St-Dominique." 

" I cannot tell you." 

" And where were you between the month of 
June in the year fifty-six and last September?" 

" I cannot tell you, Talbot Bulstrode. This is 
my secret, which I cannot tell you.'' 



202 AUBORA FLOYD. 

^ YoQ cannot tell me I There is upwards of a 
year Tniflmng from your life ; and you cannot tell 
me, your betrothed husband, what you did with 
that year?" 

** I cannot." 

"Then, Aurora Bloyd, you can never be my 



He thought that she would turn upon him, 
sublime in her indignation and fury, and that the 
explanation he longed for would burst from her 
lips in a paasionate torrent of angry words ; but 
flbe rose from her chair, and, tottering towards 
him, fell upcm her knees at his feet No other 
action could have staruck such terror to his heart. 
It seemed to him a confession of guilt But what 
guilt? what guilt? What was the dark secret of 
this young creature's brief life ? 

*^ Talbot Bulstrode," she said, in a tremulous 
Toice, which cut him to the soul, — " Talbot Bul- 
strode. Heaven knows how often I have foreseen 
and dreaded this hour. Had I not been a coward, 
I should have anticipated this explanation. But 
I thought — I thought the occasion might never 
come; or that when it did come you would be 
generous — ^and — ^trust me. If you can trust me. 



TALBOT BTJLSTRODE'S CHRISTMAS. 203 

Talbot ; if you can believe that this secret is not 
utterly shamefiil '^ 

"Not utterly shameful !" he cried. " O God ! 
Aurora, that I should ever hear you talk like 
this ! Do you think there are any degrees in 
these things ? There must be no secret between 
my wife and me ; and the day that a secret, or 
the shadow of one, arises between us, must see t» 
part for ever. Rise from your knees, Aurora; 
you are killing me with this shame and humili- 
ation. Rise from your knees ; and if we are to 
part this moment, tell me, tell me, for pity's sake» 
that I have no need to despise myself for having 
loved you with an intensity which has scarcely 
been manly.*' 

She did not obey him, but sank lower in her 
half-kneeling, half-crouching attitude, her fece 
buried in her hands^ and only the coils of her 
black hair visible to Captain Bulstrode. 

** I was motherless from my cradle, Talbot," she 
said, in a half-stifled voice. " Have pity upon me." 

"Pity!" echoed the captain ; ^^pity! Why do 
you not ask me {or justice? One question, Aurora 
Floyd; one more question; perhaps the last I 
ever may ask of you. Does your father know why 



201 AUBOBA FLOYD. 

joa left tliat school, and where you were daring 
that twelyemonth ?* 

^Hedoea.'* 

«<Thank God, at least, for that! Tell me^ 
Amora, then — only tell me this, and I will believe 
your simple word as I woold the oath of another 
woman. Tell me if he approred of yonr motive 
in leaving that school; if he aj^roved of the 
manner in which yonr life was spent during that 
twelvemonth. If you can say yes, Aurora, there 
shall be no more questions between us, and I can 
make you without fear my loved and honoured 
miter 

**I cannoty" she answered. ^I am only nine- 
teen; but within the two last years of my life I 
have dcme enou^ to break my fsither's heart ; to 
bieak the heart of the dearest father that ever 
beallied the breath of life." 

^Then all is over between us. Grod forgive 
you, Aurora Floyd; but by your own confession 
you are no fit wife for an honourable man. I shut 
my mind against all foul suspicions ; but the past 
life of my wife must be a white unblemished page, 
which all the world may be free to read." 

fie walked towards the door, and then, return- 



TALBOT bulstrode's chbistmas. 205 

ing, assisted the wretched girl to rise, and led her 
back to her seat by the window, courteously, as if 
she had been his partner at a balL Their hands 
met with as icy a touch as the hands oi two 
corpses. Ah, how much there was of death in 
that touch ! How much had died between those 
two within the last few hours ! — ^hope, confidence, 
security, love, happiness ; all that makes life worth 
the holding. 

Talbot Bulstrode paused upon the threshold of 
the little chamber, and spoke once more. 

" I shall have left Felden in half an hour. Hiss 
Floyd," he said ; " it will be better to allow yoor 
&ther to suppose that the disagreement between 
us has arisen from something of a trifling natxro,. 
and that my dismissal has come &om you. I shall, 
write to Mr. Floyd from London, and, if yon 
please, I will so word my letter as to lead him to 
think this." 

" You are very good," she answered. " Yes, I 
would rather he should think that. It may spare 
TiiTn pain. Heaven knows I have cause to be 
grateftd for anything that will do that.*' 

Talbot bowed and left the room, closing the 
door behind him. The closing of that door had ft 



206 AURORA FLOYD. 

<lisznal sound to his ear. He thought of some 
frail youug creature abandoned by her sister nuns 
in a liying tomb. He thought that he would 
rather have left Aurora lying rigidly beautiful in 
her coffin than as he was leaving her to-day. 

The jangling, jarring sound of the second 
dinner-bell clanged out, as he went from the semi- 
ohseurity of the corridor into the glaring gaslight 
of the biUiard-room. He met Lucy Floyd coming 
towards him in her rustling silk dinner-dress, with 
fringes and laces and ribbons and jewels fluttering 
aad sparkling about her ; and he ahnost hated her 
for looking so bright and radiant, remembering, as 
ba did, the ghastly fEice of the stricken creature 
be had just left. We are apt to be horribly un- 
jO£t in the hour of supreme trouble ; and I fear 
that if any one had had the temerity to ask 
Talbot Bulstrode's opinicoi of Lucy Floyd just at 
ihat moment, the captain would have declared 
her to be a mass of frivolity and affectation. If 
jou discover the worthlessness of the only woman 
you love upon earth, you will perhaps be apt to 
feel maliciously disposed towards the. many esti- 
mable people about you. You are savagely in- 
clined, when you remember that they for whom 



TALBOT BULSTRGDB'S CHRISTMAS. 207 

you care nothing are so good, while she on whom 

you set your soul is so wicked. The vessel which 

you freighted with every hope of your heart has 

gone down ; and you are angry at the very sight 

of those other ships riding so gallantly before the 

breeze^ Lucy recoiled at the aspect of the young 

man's face. 

" What is it ?'' she asked ; ** what has happened, 

Captain Bulstrode ?" 

" Nothing — ^I have received a letter from Corn- 
wall which obliges me to——" 

His hollow voice died away into a hoarse whisper 
before he could finish the sentence. 

" Lady Bulstrode — or Sir John — ^is ill perhaps ?" 
hazarded Lucy. 

Talbot pointed to his white Ups and shook his 
head. The gesture might mean anything. He 
could not speak. The hall was full of visitors and 
children going into dinner. The little people 
were to dine with their seniors that day, as an 
especial treat and privilege of the season. The 
door of the dining-room was open, and Talbot saw 
the gray head of Archibald Floyd dimly visible at 
the end of a long vista of lights and silver and glass 
and evergreens. The old man had hisf nephews 



208 AUROBA FLOYD. 

and nieces and their children grouped about him ; 
but the place at his right hand, the place Aurora 
was meant to fill, was vacant Captain Bulstrode 
turned away from that gaily-lighted scene and ran 
up the staircase to his room, where he found his 
servant waiting with his master's clothes laid out, 
wondering why he had not come to dress. 
• The man fell baci at the sight of Talbot's face, 
ghastly in the light of the wax-candles on the 
dressing-table. 

" I am going away, Philman," said the captain, 
speaking very fast, and in a thick indistinct voice. 
" I am going down to Cornwall by the express to- 
night, if I can get to Town in time to catch the 
train. Pack my clothes and come after me. You 
can join me at the Paddington Station. I shall 
walk up to Beckenham, and take the first train 
for Town. Here, give this to the servants for me, 
wiUyou?" 

He took a confused heap of gold and silver from 
his pocket, and dropped it into the man's hand. 

** Nothing wrong at Bulstrode, I hope, sir ?" said 
the servant. " Is Sir John ill ?" 

" No, no ; I've had a letter from my mother — I — 
you'll find me at the Great Western." 



TALBOT BULSTRODE'S CHRISTMAS. 209 

He snatched up his hat, and was hurrying from 
the room; but the man followed hirn with his 
greatcoat. 

" You'll catch your death, sir, on such a night as 
this/' the servant said, in a tone of respectful 
remonstrance. 

The banker was standing at the door of the 
dining-room when Talbot crossed the hall. He 
was telling a servant to look for his daughter. 

" We are all waiting for Miss Moyd," the old 
man said ; " we cannot begin dinner without Miss 
Floyd." 

Unobserved in the confusion, Talbot opened the 
great door softly, and let himself out into the cold 
winter's night. The long terrace was all ablaze 
with the lights in the high narrow windows, as 
upon the night when he had first come to Felden ; 
and before him lay the park, the trees bare and 
leafless, the ground white with a thin coating of 
snow, the sky above gray and starless, — a cold and 
desolate expanse, in dreary contrast with the 
warmth and brightness behind. All this was 
typical of the crisis of his life. He was leaving 
warm love and hope, for cold resignation or icy 
despair. He went down the terrace-steps, across 

VOL. I. p 



2i0 A0BORA FLOTIX 

the trim garden-walks and out into that wide^ 
mysterious park. The long avenue was ghostly in 
the gray light, the tracery of the interlacing 
branches above his Head making black shadows, 
that flickered to and fro upon the whitened ground 
beneath his feet. He walked for a quarter of a 
mile before he looked back at the lighted windows 
behindhim. He did not turn, until a bend in the 
avenue had brought him to a spot from which he 
could see the dimly lighted bay-window of the room 
in which he had left Aurora. He stood for some 
time looking at this feeble glimmer, and thinking: 
— thinking of all he had lost, or all he had perhaps 
escaped — thinking of what his life was to be hence- 
fi>rth without that woman-thinking that he would 
rather have been the poorest ploughboy in Becken- 
ham parish than the heir of Bulstrode, if he could 
have taken the girl he loved to his heart, and 
believed in her truth.^ 



2U 



CHAPTER X 

FIGHTING THE BATTLE. 

The new year began in sadness at Felden Woods, 
for it fonnd Archibald Floyd watching in the sick- 
room of his only daughter. 

Aurora had taken her place at the long dinner- 
table npon the night of Talbot's departure ; and 
except for being perhaps a little more vivacious 
and brilliant than usual, her manner had in no way 
changed after that terrible interview in the bay- 
windowed room. She had talked to John Hellish, 
and had played and sung to her younger cousins ; 
she had stood behind her fether, looking OT^r his 
cards through all the fluctteting fortunes of a 
rubber of long whist ; and the next morning her 
maid had found her in a raging fever, with burning 
cheeks and blood-shot eyes, her long purple-black 
hair all tumbled and tossed about the pillows, and 
her dry hands scorching to the touch. The tele- 

p 2 



212 AURORA FLOTD. 

graph brought two grave London physicians to 
Pelden before noon ; and the house was clear of 
visitors by nightfall^ only Mrs. Alexander and 
Lucy remaining to assist in nursing the invalid. 
The West-End doctors said very little. This fever 
v^as as other fevers to them* The young lady had 
caught a cold perhaps ; she had been imprudent, 
as these young people will be, and had received 
some sudden chill. She had very likely over- 
heated herself with dancing, or had sat in a 
draught, or eaten an ice. There was no im- 
jnediate danger to be apprehended. The patient 
Jiad a superb constitution; there was wonderful 
vitality in the system ; and with careful treatment 
die would soon come round. Careful treatment 
meant a two-guinea visit every day from each of 
these learned gentlemen; though, perhaps, had 
they given utterance to their inmost thoughts, they 
would have owned that, for all they could tell to 
the contrary, Aurora Floyd wanted nothing but to 
be let alone, and left in a darkened chamber to 
fight out the battle by herself. But the banker 
would have had all Saville Kow summoned to the 
sick-bed of his child, if he could by such a measure 
have saved lier a moment's pain ; and he implored 



FIGHTING THE BATTLE. 21S 

the two physicians to come to Felden twice a day 
if necessary, and to call in other physicians if 
they had the least fear for their patient. Aurora 
was delirious ; but she revealed very little in that 
delirium. I do not quite believe that people often 
make the pretty, sentimental, consecutive confes- 
sions imder the influence of fever which are so 
freely attributed to them by the writers of 
romancea We rave about foolish things in those 
cruel moments of feverish madness. We are 
wretched because there is a man with a white hat 
on in the room ; or a black cat upon the counter- 
pane ; or spiders crawling about the bed-curtains ; 
or a coal-heaver who mil put a sack of coals on 
our chest. Our delirious fancies are like our 
dreams, and have very little connection with the 
sorrows or joys which make up the sum of our lives. 
So Aurora Floyd talked of horses and dogs, and 
masters and governesses ; of childish troubles that 
had afflicted her years before, and of girlish plea- 
sures, which, in her normal state of mind, had been 
utterly forgotten. ' She seldom recognized Lucy or 
Mrs. Alexander, mistaking them for all kinds of 
unlikely people ; but she never entirely forgot her 
father, and, indeed, always seemed to be conscious 



214 AURORA FLOYD. 

o£ Ids presence, and was perpetually appealing to 
Mm, imploring him to forgive her for some act of 
childish disobedience committed in those departed 
jears of which she talked so mudi. 

John Mallish had taken up his abode at the 
'Grayhound Lm, in Croydon High Street, and 
•^icove every day to Felden Woods, leaving his 
phaeton at the park-gates, and walking up to the 
lionse to make his inquiries. The servants took 
notice of the big Yorkshireman's pale &.ce, and 
set him down at once as "sweet" upon their 
young lady. They liked him a great deal better 
than Gaptain Bulstrode, who had been too " 'igh " 
and '*'aughty'* for them. John flung his half- 
sovereigns right and left ^dien he came to the 
hushed mansion in which Aurora lay, with loving 
fiiends about her. He held the footman who 
answared the door by the button-hole, and would 
have gladly paid the man haK-a-crown a minute 
for his time while he asked anxious questions about 
Miss Floyd's health. Mr. Mellish was warmly 
sympathized with, therefore, in the servants' haU 
at Felden. His man had informed the banker's 
household how he was the best master in England, 
and how Mellish Park was a species of terrestrial 



FIGHTING THE BATTLE. 215 

- Paradise, maintained for the benefit of trustworthy 
retainers ; and Mr. Floyd's servants expressed a 
wish that their young lady might get well, and 
marry the ** fiiir cme,'* as they called John. They 
came to the conclusion that there had been what 
they called ^'a split" between Miss Floyd bxiA 
the captain, and that he had gone off in a huff; 
which was like his impudence, seeing that their 
young Jady would have himdreds of thousands cf 
pounds by-and-by, and was jgood enough for a duke 
instead of a beggarly officer. 

Talbot's letter to Mr. Floyd reached Felden 
Woods on the 27th of December ; but it lay for 
some time unopened upon the library table. Archh 
bald had scarcely heeded bis intended aan-in-laVs 
disappearance, in his anxiety about Aurora. When 
he did open the letter. Captain Bulstrode's woids 
were almost meaningless to him, though he was just 
^bletogatherthatthe engagement had been broken, 
— hy his daughter's wish, as Talbot seemed to infeor. 

The banker's reply to this communicatiGn was 
very brief; he wrote : 

*' My deab Sib, — ^Your letter arrived here some 
days since, but has only been opened by me ibis 
morning. I have laid it aside, to be replied tQ» 



216 AURORA FLOYD. 

D.V., at a future time. At present I am unable to 
attend to anything. My daughter is seriously ill. 

" Tours obediently, 

*' Archibald Floyd.'* 

"Seriously ill!" Talbot Bulstrode sat for 
nearly an hour with the banker's letter in his 
hand, looking at those two words. How much or 
how little might the sentence mean? At one 
moment, remembering Archibald Floyd's devotion 
to his daughter, he thought that this serious 
illness was doubtless some very trifling business, — 
some feminine nervous attack, common to young 
ladies upon any hitch in their love affairs ; but 
five minutes afterwards he fancied that those 
words had an awful meaning — that Aurora was 
djring ; dying of the shame and anguish of that 
interview in the little chamber at Felden. 

Heaven above! what had he done? Had he 
murdered this beautifiil creature, whom he loved a 
million times better than himself? Had he killed 
her with those impalpable weapons, those sharp 
and cruel words which he had spoken on the 
25th of December? He acted the scene over 
again and again, until the sense of outraged 
honour^ then so strong upon him, seemed to grow 



FIGHTINa THE BATTLE. 217 

dim and confused ; and he began almost to wonder 
why he had quarrelled with JAurora. What if, 
after all, this secret involved only some school- 
girl's folly? No; the crouching figure and 
ghastly face gave the lie to that hope. The 
secret, whatever it might be, was a matter of life 
and death to Aurora Floyd. He dared not try to 
guess what it was. He strove to close his mind 
against the surmises that would arise to him. In 
the first days that succeeded that terrible Christ- 
mas he determined to leave England. He would 
try to get some Government appointment that 
would take him away to the other end of the 
world, where he could never hear Aurora's name 
— ^never be enlightened as to the mystery that 
had separated them. But now, now that she was 
iU, — ^in danger, perhaps, — ^how could he leave the 
country ? How could he go away to some place 
where he might one day open the English news- 
papers and see her name among the list of deaths ? 
Talbot was a dreary guest at Bulstrode Castle. 
His mother and his cousin ConstoDce respected 
his pale face, and held themselves aloof from him 
in fear and trembling ; but his father asked what 
the deuce was the matter with the boy, that he 



Y. 



218 AURORA FLOYD, 

looked so dbtapMLen^ and why he didn't take his 
gon and go out on the moors, and get an appetite 
for his dinner, like a Christian, instead of moping in 
his own rooms all day long, biting his fingers' ends. 

Once, and once only, did Lady Bulstrode allude 
to Aurora Floyd. 

" You asked Miss Floyd for an explanation, I 
suppose, Talbot ?" she said. 

" Yes, mother." 

^' And the result?" 

"Was the termination of our engagement. I 
had rather you would not speak to me of this 
subject again, if you please, mother." 

Talbot took his gun, and went out upon the 
moors, as his fether advised ; but it was not to 
slaughter the last o& the pheasants, but to think in 
peace of Aurora Floyd, that the young man went 
out The low-lying clouds upon the moorlands 
seemed to shut him in like prison-walls. How 
many miles of desolate country lay between the 
dark expanse on which he stood and the red-brick 
mansion at Felden! — ^how many leafless hedge- 
rows ! — ^how many frozen streams ! It was only a 
day's journey, certainly, by the Great Western; 
but there was something cruel in the knowledge 



FIGBTINa THE BATTLE. 219 

that half the length of England lay between the 
Kentish woods and that far angle of thel British 
Isles upon which Castle Bulstrode reared its 
weather-beaten walls. The wail of moaming 
voices might be loud in Kent, and not a whisper 
of death reach the listening ears in GomwalL 
How he envied the lowest servant at Felden, who 
knew day by day and hour by hour of the progress 
of the battle between Death and Aurora Floyd ! 
And yet, after all, what was she to him? What 
did it matter to him if she were well or iU? 
The grave could never separate them more utterly 
than they had been separated from the very 
moment in which he discovered that she was not 
worthy to be his* wifa He had done her no 
wrong ; he had given her a fiiU and fisdr oppor- 
tunity * of clearing herself from the doubtful 
shadow on her name ; and she had been unable 
to do so. Nay, more, she had given him every 
reason to suppose, by her manner, that the shadow 
was even a darker one than he had feared. Was 
he to blame, then? Was it his fault if she wei:e 
ill ? Were his days to be misery, and his nights 
B, burden because of her? He struck the stock of 
his gun violently upon the ground at the thought^ 



220 AURORA FLOYD. 

and thrust the ramrod down the barrel, and loaded 
his fowling-piece furiously with nothing; and 
then, casting himself at fiill length npon the 
stunted turf, lay there till the early dusk closed 
in about him, and the soft evening dew saturated 
his shooting-coat, and he was in a fair way to be 
stricken with rheumatic fever. 

I might fill chapters with the foolish sufferings 
of this young man; but I fear he must have 
become very wearisome to my afflicted readers; 
to those, at least, who have never suffered from this 
fever. The sharper the disease, the shorter its 
continuance ; so Talbot will be better by-and-by, 
and will look back at his old self, and laugh at his 
old agonies. Surely this inconstancy of ours is 
the worst of all — this fickleness, by reason of 
which we cast off our former selves with no more 
compunction than we feel in flinging away a worn- 
out garment. Our poor threadbare selves, the 
shadows of what we were ! With what sublime, 
patronizing pity, with what scornful compassion, 
we look back upon the helpless dead and gone 
creatnres, and wonder that anything so foolish 
could have been allowed to cumber the earth ! 
Shall I feel the same contempt ten years hence 



FIGHTING THE BATTLE. 221 

for myseK as I am to-day, as I feel to-day for 
myself as I was ten years ago? Will the loves 
and aspirations, the belie& and desires of to-day, 
appear as pitiful then as the dead loyes and 
dreams of the bygone decade ? Shall I look back 
in pitying wonder, and think what a fool that 
young man was, although there was something 
candid and innocent in his very stupidity, after 
all ? Who can wonder that the last visit to Paris 
killed Voltaire ? Fancy the octogenarian looking 
round the national theatre, and seeing himself 
through an endless vista of dim years, a young 
man again, paying his court to a ^^ goat-faced car- 
dinal," and being beaten by De Rohan's lackeys 
in broad^ylight. 

Have you ever visited some still country town 
after a lapse of years, and wondered, fast-living 
reader ! to find the people you knew in your last 
visit still alive and thriving, with hair unbleached 
as yet, although you have lived and suffered whole 
centuries since then ? Surely Providence gives us 
this sublimely egotistical sense of Time as a set-off 
against the brevity of our lives ! I might make 
this book a companion in bulk to the Catalogue 
of the British Museum, if I were to tell aU that 



222 AUBORA FLOTD. 

Talbot Bnlstrode felt and soffered in the month of 
January^ 1858, — ^if I were to anatomize the doubts 
and confusions and self-contradictions, the mental 
resolutions made one moment to be broken the 
next I refrain, therefore, and will set down 
nothing but the fact, that on a certain Sunday 
midway in the month, the captain, sitting in the 
&mily pew at Bulstrode chujrch, directly facing 
flie monument of Admiral Hartley Bulstrode, who 
jfou^t and died in the days of Queen Elizabeth, 
registered a silent oath that, as he was a gentleman 
and a Christian, he would henceforth abstain from 
holding any voluntary communication with Aurora 
Floyd. But for this vow he must have broken 
down, and yielded to his yearning fear and love, 
and gone to Felden Woods to throw himself, blind 
and unquestioning, at the feet of the sick woman. 

The tender green of the earliest leaflets was 
Inreaking out in bright patches upon the hedge- 
rows round Felden Woods ; the ash-buds were no 
longer black upon the front of March, and pale 
Tiolets and primroBes made exquisite trmsery in 
the shady nooks beneath the oaks and beeches. 
AU nature was rejoicing in the nuld April weather, 



FIGHTDlta THE BATTLE. 223 

when Aurora lifted h^ dark eyes to her fettiier's 
face with something of their did look and fiuniliar 
light. The battle had been a long and severe one ; 
but it was well-nigh over now, the physicians said. 
Defeated Death drew back for a while, to wait a 
better opportinnty for making his fatal spring]; and 
the feeble victor was to be carried down-fitairs to 
sit in tibe drawing-room for the first time since the 
night of December the 25th. 

John Mellish, happening to be at Peld^i that 
day, was allowed the sapreme privilege of carrying 
the fragile bnrden in his strong aims, from the 
door of the sick chamber to the great sofa by lie 
fire in the drawing-room ; attended by a proc«3sion 
of happy people bearing shawls and pillows, vinai- 
grettes and scent-bottles, and other invalid para- 
phernalia. Every creature at Felden was devoted 
to this adored convalescent. Archibald Floyd 
lived only t6 minister to her ; gentle Lucy waited 
on her night and day, fearfol to trust the service 
to menial hands ; Mrs. Powell, like some pale and 
quiet shadow, lurked amidst the bed-curtains, 
soft of foot and watchful of eye, invaluable in the 
sick-chamber, as the doctors said Throughout 
her illness, Aurora had never mentioned the name 



224 AUBOBA FLOYD. 

of Talbot Bulstrode. Not even when the fever 
was at its worst, and the brain most distraught, 
had that fEtmiliar name escaped her lips. Other 
names, strange to Lucy, had been repeated by her 
again and again : the names of places and horses 
and slangy technicalities of the turf, had inter- 
larded the poor girFs brain-sick babble ; but what- 
ever were her feelings with regard to Talbot, no 
word had revealed their depth or sadness. Yet 
I do not think that my poor dark-eyed heroine 
was utterly feeluigless upon this point. When 
they first spoke of carrying her down-stairs, Mrs. 
Powell and Lucy proposed the little bay-windowed 
chamber, which was small and snug, and had a 
southern aspect, as the fittest place for the invalid ; 
but Aurora cried out shuddering, that she would 
never enter that hateful chamber again. 

As soon as ever she was strong enough to bear 
the fatigue of the journey, it was considered ad- 
visable to remove her from Felden ; and Leaming- 
ton was suggested by the doctors as the best place 
for the change. A mild climate and a pretty 
inland retreat, a hushed and quiet town, peculiarly 
adapted to invalids, being almost deserted by other 
visitors after the hunting season. 



FIGHTINa THE BATTLE. 225 

Shakespeare's birthday had come and gone, and 
the high festivals at Stratford were over, when 
Archibald Floyd took his pale daughter to Lea- 
mington. A fiimished cottage had been engaged 
for them a mile and a half out of the town ; a 
pretty place, haK villa, half farmhouse, with walls 
of white plaster chequered with beams of black 
wood, and well-nigh buried in a luxuriant and 
trimly-kept flower-garden ; a pleasant place, form- 
ing one of a little cluster of rustic buildings 
crowded about a gray old church in a nook of the 
roadway, where two or three gi*een lanes met, and 
"went branching ofif between overhanging hedges ; 
la most retired spot, yet clamorous with that noise 
which is of all others cheerful and joyous, — ^the 
hubbub of farmyards, the cackle of poultry, the 
cooing of pigeons, the monotonous lowing of lazy 
cattle, and the squabbling grunt of quarrelsome 
pigs. Archibald could not have brought his 
daughter to a better place. The chequered farm- 
house seemed a haven of rest to this poor weary 
girl of nineteen. It was so pleasant to lie wrapped 
in shawls, on a chintz-covered sofa, in the open 
window, listening to the rustic noises in the straw- 
littered yard upon the other side of the hedge, 

VOL. L Q 



226 AUBORA FLOYD. 

with her feithfal Bow-woVs big fore-paws resting 
on the cndiions at her feet. The sounds in the 
farmyard were pleasanter to Aurora than the 
monotonoos inflections of Mrs. Powell's voice; 
but as that lady considered it a part of her duty 
to read aloud for the invalid's delectation. Miss 
Floyd was too good-natured to own how tired she 
was of ^Marmion' and *Childe Harold,' * Evan- 
geline,' and *The Queen of the May,' and how 
she would have preferred in her present state of 
mind to listen to a lively dispute between a brood 
of ducks round the pond in the fjarmyard, or a 
trifling discussion in the pigsty, to the sublimest 
Knes ever penned by poet, living or dead. The 
poor girl had suffered very much, and there was a 
certain sensuous, lazy pleasure in this slow re- 
covery, this gradual return to strength. Her own 
nature revived in unison with the bright revival of 
the genial summer weather. As the trees in the 
garden put forth new strength and beauty, so the 
glorious vitaUty of her constitution returned with 
much of its wonted power. The bitter blows had 
left their scars behind them, but they had not 
killed her, after alL They had not utterly 
changed her even, for glimpses of the old Aurora 



FIGHTING THE BATTLE. 227 

appeared day by day in the pale convalescent; 
and Archibald Floyd, whose life was at best but 
a reflected existence, felt his hopes revive as he 
looked at his daughter. Lucy and her mother 
had gone back to the villa at Fulham, and to 
their own family duties ; so the Leamington party 
consisted only of Aurora and her father, and that 
pale shadow of propriety, the ensign's light-haired 
widow. But they were not long without a visitor. 
John Mellish, artfully taking the banker at a disr 
advantage in some moment of flurry and confusion 
at Felden Woods, had extorted from him an in* 
vitation to Leamington ; and a fortnight after 
their arrival he presented his stalwart form and 
fidr face at the low wooden gates of the chequered 
cottage. Aurora laughed (for the first time since 
her illness) as she saw that faithful adorer come, 
parpet-bag in hand, through the labyrinth of grass 
and flower-beds towards the open window at which 
she and her father sat ; and Archibald, seeing that 
first gleam of gaiety in the beloved face, could 
have hugged John Mellish for being the cause of 
it. He would have embraced a street tumbler, 
or the low comedian of a booth at a fair, or a 
troop of performing dogs and monkeys, or any* 

Q 2 



228 AURORA FLOYD. 

thing upon earth that could win a smile from his 
sick child. Like the Eastern potentate in the 
fairy tale, who always offers half his kingdom and 
his daughter's hand to any one who can cure the 
princess of her bilious headache, or extract her 
carious tooth, Archibald would have opened a 
banking account in Lombard Street, with a fabu- 
lous sum to start with, for any one who could give 
pleasure to this black-eyed girl, now smiling, for 
tiie first time in that year, at sight of the big fair- 
faced Yorkshireman coming to pay his foolish 
worship at her shrine. 

It was not to be supposed that Mr. Floyd had 
felt no wonder as to the cause of the rupture of 
his daughter's engagement to Talbot Bulstrode. 
The anguish and terror endured by him during 
her long illness had left no room for any other 
thought ; but since the passing away of the danger, 
he had pondered not a little upon the abrupt 
rupture between the lovers. He ventured once, 
in the first week of their stay at Leamington, to 
speak to her upon the subject, asking why it was 
she had dismissed the captain. Now if there was 
one thing more hateful than another to Aurora 
Floyd, it was a lie. I do not say that she had 



FIGHTING THE BATTLE. 229 

never told one in the course of her lifa There 
are some acts of folly which carry falsehood and 
dissimulation at their heels as certainly as the 
shadows which follow us when we walk towards the 
evening sun ; and we very rarely swerve from the 
severe boundary-line of right without being dragged 
ever so much fiEtrther than we calculated upon 
across the border. Alas ! my heroine is not fault- 
less. She would take her shoes oS to give them 
to the barefooted poor ; she would take the heart 
from her breast, if she could by so doing heal the 
wounds she has inflicted upon the loving heart of 
her father. But a shadow of mad folly has blotted 
her motherless youth, and she has a terrible har- 
vest to reap from that lightly-sown seed, and a 
cmel expiation to make for that unforgotten 
wrong. Yet her natural disposition is all truth 
and candour ; and there are many young ladies, 
whose lives have been as primly ruled and ordered 
aa the fair pleasure-gardens, of a Tybumian square, 
who could tell a fedsehood with a great deal better 
grace than Aurora Floyd. So when her father 
asked her why she had dismissed Talbot Bulstrode, 
she made no answer to that question ; but simply 
told him that the quarrel had been a very painfiiL 



230. / AURORA FLOYa 

one, and that she hoped neyer to hear the cap- 
tain's name again : although at the same time she 
assured Mr. Floyd that her lover's conduct had' 
been in nowise unbecoming a gentleman and a 
man of honour. Archibald implicitly obeyed his 
daughter in this matter, and the n^ime of Talbot 
Bulstrode never being spoken, it seemed as if the* 
young man had dropped out of their Uves, or as if 
he had neyer had any part in the destiny of Aurora 
Floyd. Heaven knows what Aurora herself 
felt and suffered in the quiet of her low-roofed, 
white-curtained little chamber, with the soft May 
moonlight stealing in at the casement-windows, 
and creeping in wan radiance about the walls. 
Heaven only knows the bitterness of the silent 
battle. Her vitality made her. strong to suffer^ 
her vivid imagination intensified every tlirob g( 
pain. In a dull and torpid soul grief is a slow 
anguish ; but with her it was a fierce and tem- 
|)estuou8 emotion, in which past and future seemed 
lolled together with the present to make a con*- 
€entrated agony. But,, by an all-wise dispensation, 
the stormy sorrow wears itseK out by reason of its 
very violence, while the dull woe drags its slow 
length sometimes through weary years, becoming 



FIGHTING THB BATTLE. 231: 

at last engrafted in the very nature of the patient 
sufferer, as some diseases become part of our con- 
stitutions. Aurora was fortunate in being per« 
mitted to fight her battle in silence, and to suffer 
unquestioned. If the dark hollow rings about her 
eyes told of sleepless nights, Archibald ilojd 
forbore to torment her with anxious speeches and 
trite consolations. The clairvoyance of love told 
him that it was better to let her alone. So the 
trouble hanging over the little circle was neither 
seen nor spoken o£ Aurora kept her skeleton in 
some quiet comer, and no one saw the grim skulls 
or heard the rattle of the dry bones. Archibald 
Floyd read his newspapers, and wrote his letters ; 
Mrs. Walter Powell tended the convalescent, who 
reclined during the best part of the day on the 
sofa in the open window; and John Hellish 
loitered about the garden and the farmyard, leaned 
on the low white gate, smoking his cigar, and 
talking to the men about the place, and was in 
and out of the house twenty times in an hour. The 
banker pondered sometimes in serio-comic pei^- 
plexity as to what was to be done with this big 
Yorkshireman, who hung upon him like a good- 
natured monster of six feet two^ conjured into 



232 AURORA FLOTD. 

existence by the hospitality of a modem Franken-^ 
stein. He had invited him to dinner, and, lo, he 
appeared to be saddled with him for life. He 
could not tell the friendly, generous, loud-spoken 
creature to go away. Besides, Mr. Mellish was 
on the whole very useful, and he did much to- 
wards keeping Aurora in apparently good spirits. 
Yet, on the other hand, was it right to tamper 
with this great loving heart ? Was it just to let 
the young man linger in the light of those black 
eyes, and then send him away when the invalid 
was equal to the effort of giving him his conge ? 
Archibald Floyd did not know that John had been 
rejected by his daughter on a certain autumn 
morning at Brighton. So he made up his mind 
to speak frankly, and sound the depths of his 
visitor's feelings. 

Mrs. Powell was making tea at a little table 
near one of the windows; Aurora had fallen 
asleep with an open book in her hand ; and the 
banker walked with John Mellish up and down an 
espaliered alley in the golden sunset. 

Archibald freely communicated his perplexities 
to the Yorkshireman. " I need not tell you, my 
dear Mellish," he said, "how pleasant it is to me 



FIGHTma THE BATTLE. 233 

to have you here. I never had a son ; but if it 
had pleased God to give me one, I could have 
wished him to be just such a frank, noble-hearted 
fellow as yourself. I'm an old man, and have 
seen a great deal of trouble — the sort of trouble 
which strikes deeper home to the heart than any 
sorrows that begin in Lombard Street or on 
'Change ; but I feel younger in your society, and 
I find myself clinging to you and leaning on you 
as a father might upon his son. You may believe, 
then, that I don't wish to get rid of you." 

" I do, Mr. Floyd ; but do you think that any 
one else wishes to get rid of me ? Do you think 
I'm a nuisance to Miss Floyd ?" 

*' No, Mellish," answered the banker energeti- 
cally. ** I am sure that Aurora takes pleasure in 
your society, and seems to treat you almost as if 
you were her brother; but — but I know your 
feelings, my dear boy, and what I fear is, that you 
may perhaps never inspire a warmer feeling in her 
heart" 

" Let me stay and take my chance, Mr. Floyd," 
cried John, throwing his cigar across the espaliers, 
and coming to a dead stop upon the gravel-walk 
in the warmth of his enthusiasm. '^ Let me stay 



^ AUSORA FLOTD. 

and take my chance. If there's any disappoint^ 
ment to be borne, I'll bear it like a man ; I'll go 
back to the Park, and you shall never be bothered 
with me again. Miss Floyd has rejected me once 
abeady ; but perhaps I was in too great a hurry. 
I've grown wiser since then, and I've learnt to 
bide my time. Tye one of the finest estates in 
Yorkshire ; I'm not worse looking than the gene- 
rality of fellows, or worse educated than the 
generality of fellows. I mayn't have straight 
hair, and a pale fetce, and look as if I'd walked 
oat of a three-Yolume novel, like Talbot Bul- 
strode. I may be a stone or two over the correct 
weight for wirmiBg a youBg lady'8 heart ; but I'm 
sound, wind and Umb. I never told a Ue, or com- 
mitted a mean action ; and I love your daughter 
with as true and pure a love as ever man felt for 
woman. May I try my luck once more ?" 

"You may, John." 

**And have I, — ^thank you, sir, for calling me 
John, — ^have I your good wishes for my success?" 
' The banker shook Mr. MeUish by the hand as 
he answered this question. 

" You have, my dear John, my best and heartiest 
wishes." 



FIGPTING THE BATTLE. 235 

So there were three battles of the heart bemg 
fought in that spring-tide of fifty-eight Aurora 
and Talbot, separated from each other by the 
length and breadth of half England, yet united by 
an impalpable chain, were struggling day by day 
to break its links ; while poor John Mellish quietly 
waited in the background, fighting the sturdy 
fight of the strong heart, which very rarely fails to 
wii^ the prize it is set upon, however high or far 
away that prize may seem to be. 



236 AURORA FLOYD. 



CHAPTER XI. 

AT THE CHAtEAU d'ARQUES. 

John Mellish made himself entirely at home in 
the little Leamington circle after this interview 
with Mr. Floyd. No one could have been more 
tender in his manner, more respectful, untiring, 
and devoted, than was this rough Torkshireman 
to the broken old man. Archibald must have 
been less than human had he not in somewise 
returned this devotion, and it is therefore scarcely 
to be wondered that he became very warmly 
attetched to his daughter's adorer. Had John 
Mellish been the most designing disciple of 
MaccluavelU, instead of the most transparent and 
candid of living creatures, I scarcely think he 
could have adopted a truer means of making 
for himself a claim upon the gratitude of Aurora 
Floyd than by the aflfection he evinced for her 
father. And this aflfection was as genuine as all 



AT THE chAteau d'arques. 237 

else in that simple nature. How could he do 
otherwise than love Aurora's father ? He woi her 
father. He had a sublime claim upon the devo- 
tion of the man who loved her ; who loved her 
as John loved, — ^unreservedly, undoubtingly, child- 
ishly ; with such blind, unquestioning love as an 
infant feels for its mother. There may be better 
women than that mother, perhaps ; but who shall 
make the child believe so ? 

John Mellish could not argue with himself upon 
his passion, as Talbot Bulstrode had d6ne. He 
could not separate himseK £rom his love, and 
reason with the wild madness. How could he 
divide himself fix)m that which was himself ; more 
than himself; a diviner seK? He asked no ques- 
tions about the past life of the woman he loved. 
He never sought to know the secret of Talbot's 
departure from Felden. He saw her, beautiful, 
fascinating, perfect; and he accepted her as a 
great and wonderful fact, like the round midsummer 
moon shining down on the rustic flower-beds and 
espaliered garden-walks in the balmy June nights. 

So the tranquil days glided slowly and monoto- 
nously past that quiet circle. Aurora bore her 
silent burden; bore her trouble with a grand 



"238 AUROBA FLOYD. 

courage, peculiar to sach rich organizations as her 
own; and none knew whether the serpent had 
been rooted from her breast, or had made for 
himself a permanent home in her heart The 
banker's most watchful care could not fathom the 
womanly mystery; but there were times when 
Archibald Floyd ventured to hope that his daugh- 
ter was at peace, and Talbot Bulstrode well-nigh 
forgotten. In any case, it was wise to keep her 
away from Felden Woods ; so Mr. Floyd proposed 
a tour through Normandy to his daughter and 
Mrs. PowelL Aurora consented, with a tender 
smile and gentle pressure of her father's hand. 
She divined the old man's motive, and recognized 
the all-watchful love which sought to carry her 
from the scene of her trouble. John Mellisb, who 
was not invited, to join the party, burst forth into 
such, raptures at the proposal, that it would have 
required considerable hardness of heart to have 
refused his escort. He knew every inch of Nor- 
mandy, he said, and promised to be of infinite use 
to Mr. Floyd and his daughter; which, seeing 
that his knowledge of Normandy had been acquired 
in his attendance at the Dieppe steeple-chases, 
and that his acquaintance with the French Ian- 




AT THE chAteau d'arques. 239^ 

guage was very limited, seemed rather doubtful. 
But for all this he contrived to keep his word. 
He went up to Town and hired an all-accomplished 
courier, who conducted the little party from town 
to village, from church to ruin, and who could 
always find relays of Normandy horses for the 
banker's roomy travelling-carriage. The little 
party travelled from place to place until pale 
gleams of colour returned in transient flushes to 
Aurora's cheeks. Grief is terribly selfish. I fear 
that Miss Floyd never took iuto consideration the 
havoc that might be going on in the great honest 
heart of John Mellish. I dare say that if she had 
ever considered the matter, she would have thought 
that a broad-shouldered Yorkshireman of six feet 
two could never suffer seriously from such a passion 
as love. She grew accustomed to his society; 
accustomed to have his strong arm handy for het 
to lean upon when she grew tired ; accustomed to 
his carrying her sketch-book and shawls and camp- 
stools ; accustomed to be waited upon by him all 
day, and served laithfully by him at every turn ; 
taking his homage as a thing of course, but making 
him superlatively and dangerously happy by her 
tacit acceptance of it 



240 AURORA FLOYD. 

September was half gone when they bent their 
way homeward, lingering for a few days at Dieppe, 
where the bathers were splashing about in semi- 
theatrical costume, and the Etablissement des 
Bains was all aflame with coloured lanterns, and 
noisy with nightly concerts. 

The early autumnal days were glorious in their 
balmy beauty. The best part of a year had 
gone by since Talbot Bulstrode had bade Aurora 
that adieu which, in one sense at leasts was to be 
eternal They two, Aurora and Talbot, might 
meet again, it is true. They might meet, ay, and 
even be cordial and friendly together, and do 
"each other good service in some dim time to 
come ; but the two lovers who had parted in the 
little bay-windowed room at Felden Woods could 
never meet again. Between them there was death 
and the grave. 

Perhaps some such thoughts as these had their 
place in the breast of Aurora Floyd as she sat, 
with John Mellish at her side, looking down upon 
the varied landscape from the height upon which 
the ruined walls of the Chateau d'Arques still 
rear the proud memorials of a day that is dead. 
I don't suppose that the banker's daughter troubled 



AT THE OHATEAU D'ABQUES. 241 

herself mucli about Henry the Fourth, or any 
other dead-and-gone celebrity who may have left 
the impress of his name upon that spot. She felt 
a tranquil sense of the exquisite purity and soft* 
ness of the air, the deep blue of the cloudless sky, 
the spreading woods and grassy plains, the 
orchards, where the trees were rosy with their 
plenteous burden, the tiny streamlets, the white 
viUa-like cottages and st3*aggling gardens, out- 
spread in a fair panorama beneath her. Carried 
out of her sorrow by the sensuous rapture we 
derive from nature, and for the first time discover- 
ing in herself a vague sense of happiness, she 
began to wonder how it was she had outlived her 
grief by so many months. 

She had never during those weary months heard 
of Talbot Bulstrode. Any change might have 
come to him without her knowledge. He might 
have married ; might have chosen a prouder and 
worthier bride to share his lofty name. She might 
meet him on her return to England with that 
happier woman leaning upon his arm. Would 
some good-natured friend tell the bride how 
Talbot had loved and wooed the banker's daughter ? 
Aurora found herseK pitying this happier woman, 

VOL. I, R 



242 AtJROBA FLOYD. 

who would, after all, win but the second love of 
that proud heart ; the pale reflection of a sun that 
has set ; the feeble glow of expiring embers when 
the great blaze has died out. They had made her 
a couch with shawls and carriage-rugs, outspread 
upon a rustic seat, for she was still far &om 
strong ; and she lay in the bright September sun- 
shine, looking down at the fair landscape, and 
listening to the hum of beetles and the chirp of 
grasshoppers upon the smooth turfl 

Her father had walked to some distance with 
Mrs. PoweH who explored every crevice and 
cranny of the ruins with the dutiful perseverance 
peculiar to commonplace people; but faithful 
John Mellish never stirred from Aurora's side. Hie 
was watching her musing face, trying to read its 
meaning — ^trying to gather a gleam of hope from 
some chance expression flitting across it. Neither 
he nor she knew how long he had watched her 
thus, when, turning to speak to him about the 
landscape at her feet, she found him on his knees 
imploring her to have pity upon him, and to love 
him, or to let him love her ; which was much the 
same. 
; "1 don't expect you to love me, Aurora," he 




AT THE chAteau d'arques. .245 

said passionately ; " how should you? What is 
there in a big clumsy fellow like me to win your 
love? I don't ask that I only ask you to let 
me love you, to let me worship you, as the people 
we see kneeling in the churches here worshiP 
their saints. You won't drive me away from you, 
will you, Aurora, because I presume to forget 
.what you said to me that cruel day at Brighton? 
You would never have suffered me to stay with you 
so long, and to be so happy, if you had meant to 
drive me away at the last I You never could have 
been so cruel !" 

Miss Floyd looked at him with a sudden terror 
in her face. What was this? What had she 
done? More wrong, moie mischief? Was her 
life to be one of perpetual wrong-doing? Was 
she to be for ever bringing sorrow upon good 
people? Was this John Mellish to be another 
sufferer by her folly ? 

" Oh, forgive me !" she criedi "forgive me! I 
never thought " 

" You never thought that every day spent by 
your side must make the anguish of parting from 
you more cruelly bitter. O Aurora, women should 
think of these things 1 Send me away from you, 

B 2 



'244 AUBOBA FLOTD« 

and what shall I be for the rest of my life ?- 
broken man, fit for nothing better than the race- 
course and the betting-rooms; a reckless man, 
ready to go to the bad by any road that can take 
me there ; worthless alike to myself and to others, 
.You must have seen such men, Aurora; men 
whose unblemished youth promised an honour- 
able manhood ; but who break up aU of a sudden, 
and go to ruin in a few years of mad dissipation. 
Nine times out of ten a woman is the cause of 
that sudden change. I lay my life at your feet, 
Aurora; I oflfer you more than my heart — 
I oflfer you my destiny. Do with it as you 
will." 

He rose in his agitation, and walked a few 
paces away from her. The grass-grown battlements 
sloped away from his feet ; an outer and inner 
moat lay below him, at the bottom of a steep 
declivity. What a convenient place for suicide, 
if Aurora should refuse to take pity upon him ! 
The reader must allow that he had availed him- 
self of considerable artifice in addressing Miss 
Floyd. His appeal had taken the form of an 
accusation rather than a prayer, and he had duly 
impressed upon this poor girl the responsibiUty 



AT THE chAteau d'arques. 245 

she would incur in refusing him. And tliisy I 
take it, is a meanness of which men are often 
guilty in their dealings with the weaker sex. 

Miss Floyd looked up at her lover with a quiet, 
half-mournful smile. 

" Sit down there, Mr. Mellish," she said, point- 
ing to a camp-stool at her side. 

John took the indicated seat, very much with 
the air of a prisoner in a criminal dock about to 
answer for his life. 

"Shall I tell you a secret?" asked Aurorai 
looking compassionately at his pale face. 

"A secret?" 

"Yes; the secret of my parting with Talbot 
Bulstrode. It was not I who dismissed him from 
Felden; it was he who refused to fulfil his en- 
gagement with me." 

She spoke slowly, in a low voice, as if it were 
painful to her to say the words which told of so 
much humiliation. 

" He did !" cried John Mellish, rising, red and 
furious, from his seat, eager to run to look for 
Talbot Bulstrode then and there, in order to in- 
flict chastisement upon him. 

" He did, John Mellish, and he was justified iiji 



246 ■ AilEORA FLOYD. 

doing SO," answered Aurora,* gravely, "You 
would have done the same/' 

" Aurora, Aurora !" 
. "Youwould. You are as good a man as he, and 
why should your sense of honour be less strong than 
his ? A barrier iffoee between Talbot Bulslarode 
and me, and separated us for ever. That barrier 
was a secret" 

^ She told him of the missing year in her young 
life ; how Talbot had called upon her for an ex- 
planation, and how she had refused to give it. 
John listened to her with a thoughtful face, which 
broke out into sunshine as she turned to him and 
said — 

"How would you have acted in such a case, 
Mr. Hellish?" 

"How should I have acted, Aurora? I should 
have trusted you. But I can give you a better 
answer to your question, Aurora. I can answer 
it by a renewal of the prayer I made you five 
minutes ago. Be my wife," 

" In spite of this secret ?" 

"In spite of a hundred secrets. I could not 
love you as I do, Aurora, if I did not believe you 
to be all that is best and purest in woman. I 



AT THE CHATEAU D'ARQUES. 24T 

cannot believe this one moment, and doubt you 
the next. I give my life and honour into your 
hands. I would not confide them to the woman 
whom I could insult by a doubt" 

His handsome Saxon fece was radiant with love 
and trustfulness as he spoke. All his patient 
devotion, so long unheeded, or accepted as a 
thing of course, recurred to Aurora's mind. Did 
he not deserve some reward, some requital for all 
this? But there was one who was nearer and 
dearer to her, dearer than even Talbot Bulstrode 
had ever been ; and that one was the white-haired 
old man pottering about amongst the ruins on the 
other side of the grassy platform. 

** Does my father know of this, Mr. Mellish ?" 
she asked. 

« He does, Aurora. He has promised to a<;cept 
me as his son ; and Heaven knows I will try to 
deserve that name. Do not let me distress you, 
dearest The murder is out now. You know that 
I still love you ; still hope. Let time do the rest." 

She held out both her hands to him with a 
toarful smile. He took those little hands in his 
own broad palms, and bending down kissed them 
reverently. 



248 AUBOBA runrB. 

'^Yoa aie rig^" she said; ^let time do the 
rest Yoa aie wortlij of the lore of a better 
woman than me, John Mellish; bi[t» with the 
help of Heayen, I will nerer gire yon canae to 
legret having trnated me." 




249 



CHAPTEE XIL 

STEEVE HARGRAVES, THE "SOFTY.'* 

Early in October Aurora Floyd returned to 
Felden Woods, once more "engaged." The 
county families opened their eyes when the re- 
port reached them that the banker's daughter was 
going to be married, not to Talbot Bulstrode, but 
to Mr. John MeDish, of Mellish Park, near Don- 
caster. The unmarried ladies — ^rather hanging on 
hand about Beckenham and West Wickham — did 
not approve of all this chopping and changing* 
They recognized the taint of the Prodder blood in 
this fickleness. The spangles and the sawdust were 
breaking out, and Aurora was, as they had always 
said, her mother's ow» daughter. She was a very 
lucky young woman, they remarked, in being able, 
after jilting one rich man, to pick up another; 
but of course a young person whose father could 
give her fifty thousand pounds on her wedding- 



250 AURORA FLOYD. 

day might be permitted to play fast and loose 
with the male sex, while worthier Marianas moped 
in their moated granges till gray hairs showed 
themselves in glistening handeaux, and cruel 
crow's feet gathered about the comers of bright 
eyes. It is well to be merry and wise, and honest 
and true, and to be off with the old love, &c. ; 
but it is better to be Miss Floyd, of the senior 
|)ranch of Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd, for then you 
^eed be none of these things. At least to such 
jBffect was the talk about Beckenham when Archi- 
Jbald brought his daughter back to Felden Woods ; 
and a crowd of dressmakers and milliners jset to 
work at the marriage garments as busily as if 
JMiss Floyd had never had any clothes in her life 
before. 

Mrs. Alexander and Lucy came back to Felden 
^ assist in the preparations for the wedding. 
JLucy had improved very much in appearance 
3ijice the preceding winter ; there was a happier 
light in her soft blue eyes, and a healthier hue in 
her cheeks; but she blushed crimson when she 

r 

first met Aurora, and hung back a little from 
Miss Floyd's caresses. 

The wedding was to take place at the end of 



STEEVE H4.RGBATES, THE "SOFTY." ?51' 

November. The bride and bridegroom Were to 
spend the winter in Paris, where Archibald Floyd, 
was i/o join them, and return tp England, " in time 
for the Craven Meeting," as John Mellish said,— 
for I am sorry to say that^ having been so happily 
duccessM in his love-affair, this young man's 
thoughts returned into their accustomed channels; 
and the creature he held dearest on earth next to 
Miss Floyd and those belonging to her, was a bay 
filly called Aurora, and entered for the Oaks and 
Leger of a future year. 

Ought I to apologize for my heroine, because 
she has forgotten Talbot Bulstrode, and that she 
lentertains a grateful affection for this adoring 
John Mellish? She ought, no doubt, to have 

died of shame and sorrow after Talbot's cruel 
desertion ; and Heaven knows that only her youth 
and vitality carried her through a very severe 
battle with the grim rider of the pale horse ; but 
having once passed through that dread encounter, 
she was, however feeble, in a fair way to recover. 
These passionate griefs, to kill at aU, must kill 
suddenly. The lovers who die for love in our 
tragedies die in such a vast hurry, that there is 
generally some mistake or misapprehension about 



252 AUBORA FLOTD. 

the bnsinesB, and the tragedy might have been a 
comedy if the hero or heroine had only waited for 
a qnarter of an honr. If Othello had but lingered 
a little before smothering his wife. Mistress Emilia 
jsn^at have come in and sworn and protested ; and 
CaasiOy with the handkerchief about his 1^, might 
have been in time to set the mind of the Taliant 
Moor at rest, and pat the Venetian dog to confa- 
flion. How happily Mr. and Mrs. Bomeo Montagoe 
might have lired and died, thanks to the dear 
good friar^ if the foolish bridegroom had not been 
in sach a hurry to swallow the vile stuff firom the 
apothecary's I and as people are, I hope and 
believe^ a little wiser in real life than they appear 
to be upon the stage, the worms very rarely get an 
honest meal off men and women who have died 
for love. So Aurora walked through the rooms at 
Felden in which Talbot Bulstrode had so often 
walked by her side; and if there was any regret 
at her hearty it was a quiet sorrow, such as we 
feel for the dead, — a sorrow not unmingled with 
pity, for she thought that the proud son of Sir 
John Baleigh Bulstrode might have been a 
happier man if he had been as generous and 
trusting as John Mellish. Perhaps the healthiest 




BTEEVE HARGRAVES, THE "SOFTY." 253 

sign of the state of her heart was^ that she could 
speak of Talbot freely, cheerfully, and without a 
blush. She asked Lucy if she had met Captain 
Bulstrode that year ; and the little hypocrite told 
her cousin, Yes ; that he had spoken to them one 
day in the Park, aifd that she believed he had 
gone into Parliament She believed! Why, she 
knew his maiden speech by heart, though it was 
on some hopelessly uninteresting bill in which the 
Cornish mines were in some vague manner in- 
volved with the national survey; and she could 
have repeated it as correctly as her youngest 
brother could declaim to his "Eomans, country- 
men and lovers." Aurora might forget him, and 
basely marry a fair-haired yorkshireman ; but for 
Lucy Floyd earth only held this dark knight, with 
the severe gray eyes and the stiff leg. Poor Lucy, 
therefore, loved and was grateful to her bnUiant 
cousin for that fickleness which had brought about 
such a change in the programme of the gay 
wedding at Felden Woods. The fair young con- 
fidante and bridesmaid could assist in the cere- 
monial now with a good grace. She no longer 
walked about like a " corpse alive ;" but took a 
hearty womanly interest in the whole affair, and 



254 AUROitA FLOYD, 

was very much concerned in a discussion as to tEe 
merits of pink versiis blue for the bonnets of the 
bridesmaids. 

The boisterous happiness of John Mellish seemed 
contagious, and made a genial atmosphere about 
the great mansion at Felden. Stalwart Andrew 
Floyd was delighted with his young cousin's 
choice. No more refusals to join him in the hnntr 
ing-field; but half the county breakfasting at 
Felden, and the long terrace and garden lumi- 
nous with " pink." 

Not a ripple disturbed the smooth current of 
that brief courtship. The Yorkshireman con- 
trived to make himself agreeable to everybody 
belonging to his dark-eyed divinity. He flattered 
their weaknesses, he gratified their caprices, he 
studied their wishes, and paid them all such 
insidious court, that Tm afraid invidious compari- 
sons were drawn between John and Talbot, to the 
disadvantage of the proud young ojBficer. 

It was impossible for any quarrel to arise 
between the lovers, for John followed his mistress 
about like some big slave, who only lived to do 
her bidding; and Aurora accepted his devotion 
with a Sultana-like grace, which became her 



STEEVE HARGRAVES, THE. "SOFTY." 255 

amazingly. Once more she visited the stables 
and inspected her father's stud, for the first tim^ 
since she had left Felden for the Parisian finishing 
school. Once more she rode across country, wear- 
ing a hat which provoked considerable criticism, 
— ^a hat which was no other than the now uni- 
versal turban, or pork-pie, but which was new tp 
the world in the autumn of fifty-eight. Her 
earlier girlhood appeared to return to her once 
more. It seemed almost as if the two years and 
a half in which she had left and returned to her 
home, and had met and parted with Talbot Bul- 
strode, had been blotted &om her life, leaving her 
spirits fresh and bright as they were before that 
stormy interview in her father's study in the June 
of fifty-six. 

The county families came to the wedding at 
Beckenham church, and were fain to confess that 
Miss Floyd looked wondrously handsome in her 
virginal crown of orange buds and flowers, and her 
voluminous Mechlin veil ; she had pleaded hard to 
be married in a bonnet, but had been overruled 
by a posse of female cousins. Mr. Bichard Gunter 
provided the marriage feast, and sent a man down 
to Felden to superintend the arrangements, who 



256 AJcmomA, junn, 

mm immeAaAiog and qilendid to lodk upon flwn 
waj of the Kentirii gneste. John Mrilish alter- 
naidj lang^bed and cried tfarooglioiit that OTentfiil 
morning, Hearoi knowB how manr times he 
ahodk hands with Archibald Floyd, canying the 
banker off into scditary comerB, and swearing, with 
the tears numing down his broad cheeks, to be a 
good husband to the old man's danghter ; so that 
it mnst hare been a relief to the white-haired old 
Bootchman when Anrom descended the staircase, 
rastling inTiolet moir£ antique, and sorroonded by 
her bridesmaids, to take leave of this dear &ther 
before the prancing steeds carried Mr. and Mrs. 
Hellish to that most prosaic of hymenial stages, 
the London Bridge Station. 

Mrs. Mellish ! Yes, she was Mrs. Mellish now. 
Talbot Balstrode read of her marriage in that very 
column of the newspaper in which he had thought 
perhaps to see her deatL How flatly the romance 
ended! With what a dull cadence the storm died 
out, and what a commonplace gray, every-day sky 
succeeded the terrors of the lightning ! Less than 
a year since, the globe had seemed to him to col- 
lapse, and creation to come to a standstill because 
of bis trouble ; and he was now in Parliament, legis- 



^ 



STBBVE HARGRAVteS, THE «' SOFTY." 2o7 

lating for the Cornish miners, and getting stout, 
his ill-natured friends said; and she — she who 
ought, in accordance with all dramatic propriety, 
to have died out of hand long before this, she had 
married a Yorkshire landowner, and would no 
doubt take her place in the county and play My 
Lady Bountiful in the village, and be chief pa- 
troness at the race-balls, and live happily ever 
afterwards. He crumpled the * Times ' newspaper, 
and flung it from him in his rage and mortification. 
" And I once thought that she loved m4 !" he cried. 

And she did love you, Talbot Bulstrode ; loved 
you as she can never love this honest, generous, 
devbted John Mellish, though she may by-and-by 
bestow upon him an affection which is a great deal 
better worth having. She loved you with the girl's 
romantic fancy and reverent admiration ; and tried 
humbly to fashion her very nature anew, that she 
might be worthy of your sublime excellence. She 
loved you as women only love in their first youth, 
and as they rarely love the men they ultimately 
marry. The tree is perhaps all the stronger when 
these first frail branches are lopped away to give 
place to strong and spreading arms, beneath which 
a husband and children may shelter. 

VOL. I. 9 



But Talbot could ncft see all 11ii& He saw 3au>- 
c thing but that biief anDouncemeat in the ^ Times:' 
/^Jotux Mdlifih, Esq., of Mellish Faik, near 
Doncaster, to Aurorai only daughter of Archibald 
, Hoyd, Banker, of Felden Woodsy Kent" He was 
angry with his sometime love, and mose angry with 
bimseK for feeling that anger; and he plunged 
furiously into blue-books, to prepare himself for the 
coming session; and again he took his gun and 
went out upon the ^^ barren, barren moorland," as 
be had done in the first violence of his grief, and 
wandered down xo the dreary sea-shore, where he 
raved about his " Amy, shallow-hearted," and tried 
the pitch of his voice against the ides of February- 
should come round, and the bill for the Comidi 
.miners be laid before the Speaker. 

Towards the dose of January, the servants at 
Mellish Park prepared for the advent of Master 
John and his bride. It was a work of love in that 
disorderly household, for it pleased them that mas- 
ter would have some one to keep him at home, and 
that the county would be entertained, and festi- 
vals held in the roomy rambling mansion. Archi- 
tects, upholsterers, and decorators had been busy 
through the ^hort winter days preparing a suite of 



. f 



STEEVE HABGBAVES, THE "SOFTY.'* 259 

apartments for Mrs. MJellish ; and the western, or 
as it was called the Gothic, wbg of tlie house had 
been restored and remodelled for Aurora, until the 
oak-roofed chambers blazed with rose-colour and 
gold, like a mediaeval chapel. If John could have 
expended half his fortune in the purchacie of a roc's 
egg to hang in these apartments^ he would have 
gladly done so. He was so proud of his Cleopatra- 
like bride, his jewel beyond all parallel amid all 
gems^ that he fancied he could not build a shrine 
rich enough for his treasure. So the house in which 
honest country squires and their sensible motherly 
wives had lived contentedly for nearly three cexji- 
turies was almost pulled to pieces, before John 
thought it worthy of the banker's daughter. The 
trainers and grooms and stable-boys shrugged their 
shoulders superciliously, and i^t fragments of 
straw disdainfully upon the paved stable-yard, as 
they heard the clatter of the tools of stonemasons 
and glaziers busy about the fa9ade of the restored 
apartments. The stable would be naught now, they 
supposed, and Muster Mellish would be always tied 
to his wife's apron-string. It was a relief to them 
to hear that Mrs. Mellish was fond of rifling and, 
hunting, and would no doubt take to horse-racipg^ 

s 2 



260 AUBOBA FLOYD. 

in due time, as the legitimate taste of a lady of 
position and fortune. 

The bells of the village church rang loudly and 
joyously in the dear winter air as the carriage-and- 
foL which had met John and his bride a^oncas- 
ter, dashed into the gates of Mellish Park and up 
the long avenue to the semi-Gothic, semi-barbaric 
portico of the great door. Hearty Yorkshire voices 
rang out in loud cheers of welcome as Aurora 
stepped from the carriage^ and passed under the 
shadow of the porch and into the old oak haU, 
which had been hung with evergreens and adorned 
with floral devices; amongst which figured the 
legend, " Welcom to Melish !" and other such 
jfriendly inscriptions, more conspicuous for their 
kindly meaning than their strict orthography. The 
servants were enraptured with their master's choice. 
She was so brightly handsome, that the simple- 
hearted creatures accepted her beauty as we accept 
the sunlight, and felt a genial warmth in that 
radiant loveliness, which the most classical perfec- 
tion could never have inspired. Indeed, a Grecian 
outline might have been thrown away upon the 
Yorkshire servants, whose uncultivated tastes were 
a great deal more disposed to recognize splendour 



^ 



STEEVE HARGRAVES, THE "SOFTY." 261 

of colour than purity of fonn. They could not 
choose but admire Aurora's eyes, which they unani- 
mously declared to be " regular shiners ;" and the 
flash of her white teeth, glancing between the full 
crimson lips ; and the bright flush which lighted 
up her pale olive skin; and the purple lustre of 
her massive coronal of plaited hair. Her beauty 
was of that luxuriant and splendid order which has 
always most efiect upon the masses, and the feisci- 
nation of her manner was almost akin to sorcery 
in its power over simple people. I lose myself 
when I try to describe the feminine intoxications, 
the wonderful fascination exercised by this dark- 
eyed siren. Surely the secret of her power to 
charm must have been the wonderful vitality of 
her nature, by virtue of which she carried life and 
animal spirits about with her as an atmosphere, 
tiU dull people grew merry by reason of her con- 
tagious presence; or perhaps the true charm of 
her manner was that childlike and exquisite un- 
consciousness of self which made her for ever a 
new creature ; for ever impulsive and sympathetic, 
acutely sensible of all sorrow in others, though of 
a nature originally joyous in the extreme. 

Mrs. Walter Powell had been transferred from 



262 AimOBA FLOYD. 

Felden Woods to Mellisli Park, and was comfort- 
ably in^lled in her prim apartments when the 
bride and bridegroom arrived. The Yorkshire 
housekeeper was to abandon the executive power 
to the ensign*8 widow, who was to take all trouble 
of administration off Aurora's hands. 

** Heaven help your friends if they ever had to 
eat a dinner of my ordering, John," Mrs. Mellish 
said, making free confession of her ignorance ; " I 
am glad, too, that we have no odcasion to turn the 
poor soul out upon the world once more. Those 
long columns of advertisements in the * Times ' 
give me a sick pain at my heart when I think of 
what a governess must have to encounter. I can- 

• 

not k)ll back in my carriage and be * grateful for 
niy advantages,' as Mrs. A^lexander says, when I 
remember the sufferings of others. I am rather 
inclined to be discontented with my lot, and to 
think it a poor thing, after all, to be rich and happy 
in a world where so many must suffer ; so I am 
glad we can give Mrs. Powell something to do at 
Mellish Park." 

The ensign's widow rejoiced very much in that 
she was to be retained in such comfortable quarters ; 
but she did not thank Aurora for the benefits 



STEEVE HABGRAYBS^ TRR « SOFTY." 268 

received from the! open Hands of the banker's daiiglt^ 
ter. She did not thank her, beeanse — she hated 
her. Why did she hate her? She hated her for tibe 
very benefits she received, or rather boeanse she^ 
Aurora, had power to bestow such benefits. She 
hated her as sdch 8low» sluggish, narrow-minded' 
oreatnres always hate the frank and generous; 
hated her as envy wiU for ever hate prosperity; as. 
Hainan hated Mordecai from the height of his 
throne ; and aa the man of Haman nature would 
hate, were he snj»reme in the universa If Mt& 
Walter Powell had been a dnchess, and Aurora a 
crossing-sweeper, she would still have envied her ; 
she would have envied her glorious eyes and flasb* 
ing teeth, her imperial carriage and generous soul. 
This pale, ,rfiity-bro^-haired ^man felt herself 
contemptible in the presence of Aurora, and shd > 
resented the ^bounteous vitality of this nature 
which made her conscious of the sluggishness of 
her own. She detested Mrs. Mellish for the pos- 
session of attributes which she felt were richer gifts 
than all the wealth of the house of Floyd, Floyd, 
and Floyd melted into one mountain of ore. But 
it is not for a dependent to ha^e^ except in a 
deeorous and gentlewomanly zoanner — secretly, in 



264 AURORA FLOTD. 

the dim recesses of her soul ; while she dresses her 
fece mih an unyarying smile-^ smile which she 
puts on every morning with her clean collar, and 
takes off at night when she goes to bed. 

Now as, by an all-wise dispensation of Providence^ 
it is not possible for one person so to hate another 
without that other having a vagae consciousness > 
of the deadly sentiment, Aurora felt that Mrs. 
Powell's attachment to her was of no very profound . 
nature. But the reckless girl did not seek to 
fathom the depth of any inimical feeling which 
might lurk in her dependent's breast 

** She is not very fond of me, poor soul !" she 
said; '^and I dare say I torment and annoy her ^ 
with my careless follies. If I were like that dear 
considerate little Lucy, now — " And with a shrug . 
of her shoulders, and an unfinished sentence ^uch 
as this, Mrs. Mellish dismissed the insignificant 
subject from her mind. 

You cannot expect these grand, courageous 
creatures to be frightened of quiet people. And 
yet, in the great dramas of life, it is the quiet 
people who do the mischief. lago was not a noisy . 
person ; though, thank Heaven ! it is no longer the 
fashion to represent him as an oily sneak, whom- 



STEEVE HARGRAVES, THE " SOFTY." * 265: 

even the most foolish of Moors could not have 
trusted. 

Aurora was at peace. The storms that had so 
nearly shipwrecked her young life had passed 
away, leaving her upon a fair and fertile shore. 
Whatever griefs she had inflicted upon her father's 
devoted heart had not been mortal ; and the old 
banker seemed a very happy man when he came, 
in the bright April weather, to see the young 
couple at Mellish Park. Amongst all the hangers- 
on of that large establishment there was only one 
person who did not join in the general voice when 
Mrs. Mellish was spoken of, and that one person 
was so very insignificant that his fellow-servants 
scarcely cared to ascertain his opinion. He was a 
man of about forty, who had been bom at Mellish 
Park, and had pottered about the stables from his 
babyhood, doing odd jobs for the grooms, and 
being reckoned, although a little "fond" upoji 
common matters, a very acute judge of horse-flesh. 
This man was called Stephen, or, more commonly, 
Steeve Hargraves. He was a squat, broad-shoul- 
dered fellow, with a big head, a pale haggard face, 
— ^a face whose ghastly pallor seemed almost un- 
natural, — ^reddish-brown eyes, and bushy, sandy 



206: jLBBOgA Fionx 

eyebrows^ whidi formed a species of penthouse- 
over those sinister-lookmg eyes. He was tiie sort 
of msn: \^ho is genendly called repulsive, — ^a man 
from whom yon recoil with a feeling of instinctive 
dislike, which is, no ^ubt, both wicked and nnjnst ^ 
fcr we have no right to take objection to a man 
becansa he has an ugly glitter in his ey^, and 
shaggy tufts of red hair meeting on the bridge of 
his nose, and b% splay feet, which seem made to 
crash and destroy whatever comes in their way. 
This was what Aurora Hellish thought when, 
a few days after her arrival at the Park, she saw 
S»eve Haigraves for the first time, coming out of 
the harness-room with a bridle across his arm. She 
was angry with herself for the involuntary shudder 
with which she drew back at the sight of this man, 
who stood at a little distance polishing the brass 
omamentB upon a set of harness, and fartively re- 
garding Mrs. Mellish as she leaned on her husband's 
arm, talking to the trainer about the foals at grass 
in the meadows outside the Park. 
' Aurora asked who the man was. 

*' Why, his name is Hargraves, ma'am," answered 
the trainer; "but we call him Steeve. He's a 
little bit touched in the upper story, — a little bit 



BTEEVE HAIWr»JLVBig> TSBi " SOFTY," 267 

^fond/ as we call itliere; but he's nseftil about 
the stables when he pleased; that amt always 
though^ for he's rather a queer temper^ and thane's 
none of us has erer been able to get the upper 
hand of him, as ma^er knows." 

John Mellish laughed. 
' ** No," he said ; ** Sieare has pretty much his 
own way in the stables^ t fancy. He was a 
favourite groom of my &ther's twenty years ago ; 
but he got a fall in the hunting-field, which did 
him some injury about the head, and he's neyer 
been quite right since. Of course thid, with my 
poor father's regard for lam, gives him a daim 
upon us, and we put up with his queer ways, dont 
we, Langley ?' 

** Well, we do, £dr," said the trainer ; ^ though, 
upon my honour, I'm sometimes half afraid of him, 
and begin to think he'll get up in the middle of 
the night and murder some of us." 

**Not tni some of you have won a hatful of 
money, Langley. Steeve's a little too fond of the 
brass to murder any of you for nothing. Yoii shall 
see his face light up presently, Aurora," said John, 
beckoning to the staUe^man. " Come here, Steeve. 
Mrs. Mellish wished you to drink her health." 



268. AURORA FLOYD. 

He dropped a sovereign into the man's broad 
muscniar pakn, — ^the hand of a gladiator, with 
horny flesh and sinews of iron. Steeve's red eyes 
glistened as his fingers closed upon the money. 

" Thank you kindly, my lady," he said, touching, 
his cap. 

He spoke in a low subdued yoice, which con- 
trasted so strangely with the physical power mani- 
fest in his appearance that Aurora drew back with 
a start. 

Unhappay for this poor "fond" creature, whose 
person was in itself repulsiye, there was something 
in this inward, semi-whispering voice which gave 
rise to an instinctive dislike in those who heard 
him speak for the first time. 

He touched his greasy woollen cap once more, 
and went slowly back to his work. 

"How white his face isT said Aurora. "Has, 
he been iU?" 

" No. He has had that pale face ever since his 
fall. I was too young when it happened, to 

remember much about it ; but I have heard my 
father say, that when they brought the poor crea- 
ture home, his face, which had been florid before, 
was as white as a sheet of writing-paper, and his. 



STEEVE HARGRAVES, THE "SOFTY." 269 

voice, until that period strong and gruff, was 
reduced to the half-whisper in which he now 
speaks. The doctors did all they could for him, 
and carried him through an awful attack of brain- 
fever; but they could never bring back his voice, 
nor the colour to his cheeks." 

" Poor fellow !" said Mrs. Mellish gently ; " he 
is very much to be pitied." 

She was reproaching herself, as she said this,, 
for that feeling of repugnance which she could not 
overcome. It was a repugnance closely allied to 
terror ; she felt as if she could scarcely be happy 
at Mellish Park while that man was on the 
premises. She was half inclined to beg her in- 
dulgent husband to pension him off, and send him 
to the other end of the county; but the next 
moment she was ashamed of her childish folly, 
and a few hours afterwards had forgotten Steeve 
Hargraves, the " Softy," as he was politely called 
in the stables. 

Beader, when any creature inspires you wifli 
this instinctive unreasoning abhorrence, avoid that 
creature. He is dangerous. Take warning, as 
you take warning by the clouds in the sky, and 
the ominous stillness of the atmosphere when 



J370 ' MJBORk jwm* 

there ig a storm comixig. Ifiatare cannot lie ; and 
jt is .nature which has plairted thafc diaddering 
terror in yoor breast ; an instinct of self-preseryar 
tion rather than of cowaidly fear, whicli at the 
first sight of some fellow-creature tells you more 
plainly than words ean q)eak, ** That man is my 
enemy 1" 

Had Aurora suffered herself to be guided by 
ibis instim^ — ^had she given way to the impulse 
which she despised as childish^ and caused Stephen 
Haxgraves to be dismissed irom Hellish Park, 
what bitter misery, what cruel anguish, might have 
.been epared to herself and others I 

The mastiff Bow-wow had accompanied his 
mistress to her new home; but Bow-wow's best 
days were done. A month before Aurcora's mar- 
riage he had been ran over by a pony-carriage in 
.one of the roads about Feld^i, and had been con- 
veyed, Weeding and disabled, to the veterinary 
surgeon's, to have one of his hind-1^ put into 
jpUnts, and to be carried through his sufferings by 
.the highest available skill in the sdence of dog- 
: doctoring. Aurora drove every day to Croydon to 
see her sick favourite ; and at the worst Bow-wow 
was always well enough to iBOOgnize his beloved 




STEEVE EABGBAVEfl, THE "SOFTY.'* 231 

mistreBS, and roll his lifrtlesfl, feyeiish tongue OTer 
her white hands, in token of that unchanging 
brute affection* which can only perish with life. 
So the mastiff was quite lame as well as half blind 
when he ardyed at Mellish Park, with the rest of 
Aurora's goods and <3hattels. He was a priyileged 
creature in the roomy mansion ; a tiger-skin was 
spread for him upon the hearth in the drawing- 
room, and he spent his declining days in luxurious 
rq)ode, basking in the fire-light or sunning himself 
in the windows, as it pleased his royal fancy ; but, 
feeUe as he was, always able to limp after Mrs. 
Mellish when she walked on the lawn or in the 
woody shrubberies which skirted the gardens. 

One day, when she had returned from her 
morning's ride with John and her father, who 
accompanied them sometimes upon a quiet gray 
cob, and seemed a younger man for the exercise, 
she lingered on the lawn in her riding-habit after 
the horses had been taken back to the stables, and 
Mr. Mellish and his father-in-law had re-entered 
the house. The mastiff saw her from the drawing- 
room window, and crawled out to welcome her. 
Tempted by the exquisite softness of the atmo- 
sphei^ sbB fitrolled, with iher riding-habit gathered 



272 AURORA FLOTD. 

under her arm and her whip in her hand, looking 
for primroses under the clumps of trees upon the 
J^wn. She gathered a cluster of wild-flowers, and 
was returning to the house, when she remembered 
some directions respecting a fayourite pony that 
was ill, which she had omitted to give to her 
groom. 

She crossed the stable-yard, followed by Bow- 
wow, found the groom, gave him her orders, and 
went back to the gardens. While talking to the 
man, she had recognized the white face of Steeve 
Hargrayes at one of the wmdows of the harness* 
•room. He came out while she was giying her 
directions, and carried a set of harness across to a 
coach-house on the opposite side of the quad- 
rangle. Aurora was on the threshold of the gates 
opening from the stables into the gardens, when 
she was arrested by a howl of pain firom the mastiff 
Bow-wow. Eapid as lightning in eyery move- 
ment, she turned round in time to see the cause of 
this cry. Steeve Hargrayes had sent the animal 
reeling away from him with a kick from his iron- 
bound dog. Cruelty to animals was one of the 
failings of the " Softy." He was not cruel to the 
Hellish horses, for he had sense enough to know 




STEEVE HARGRAVES, THE "SOFTY.'* 273 

that his daily bread depended upon his attention 
to them ; but Heaven help any outsider that came 
in his way[I Aurora sprang upon him like a 
beautiful tigress, and catching the collar of his 
fustian jacket in her slight hands, rooted him tp 
the spot upon which he stood. The grasp of those 
slender hands, convulsed by passion, was not to be 
easily shaken off; and Steeve Hargraves, taken 
completely off his guard, stared aghast at his 
assailant. Taller than the stable-man by a foot 
and a half, she towered above him, her cheeks 
white with rage, her eyes flashing fury, her hat 
fallen off, and her black hair tumbling about her 
shoulders, sublime in her passion. 

The man crouched beneath the grasp of the im- 
perious creature. 

''Let me go !" he gasped, in his inward whisper^ 
which had a hissing sound in his agitation; ^4et 
me go, or you'll be sorry ; let me go I'* 

" How dared you !" cried Aurora, — ** how dared 
you hurt him ? My poor dog ! My poor lame, 
feeble dog 1 How dared you to do it ? You cow- 
ardly dastard ! you " 

She disengaged her right hand from his collar 
and rained a shower of blows upon his clumsy 

VOL. I. T 



274 AURORA TLOYD. 

Shoulders mth her Slender Whip ; a mere toy, with 
emeralds set in its golden heed, but stinging like 
a rod of flexible steel in that little hand* 

** How dared you !" she repeated again and 
again, h^ cheeks dianging from white to scarlet 
in the effort to hold the man with one hand. Het 
tangled hair had fallen to her waict by this time, 
and the whip was broken in haK a dozen places. 

John Mellish, entering the stdble-yard by dmnce 
at this very moment, turned white with horror at 
beholding the beautifiil f ory. 

'* Aurora! Aurora!" he cried, snatching the 
man's collar from h^ grasp, and hurling him 
half a dozen paces off* ** Aurora, what is it?" 

She- told, him in broken gasps the cause of her 
indignation. He took the splintered whip from 
her hand, picked up her bat, which she had 
troddto upon in her rage, and led her across the 
yard towards the back ^itrance to the house. It 
was such bitter rfiame^ to him to think that this 
peerless, this adored creature should do anything 
to bring disgrace, or even ridicule, upon herself. 
He would have stripped off his coat and fought 
urith half a dozen coal-heavers, and thought no- 
tlting of it ; but that she-— ^ - : 



STEEVE HABGRAVI5S, THB "SOFTY." 275 

** Go in, go in, my darling girl,** he Baid, witk 
sorrowful tenderness ; ** the servants are peeping 
and prying about, I dare say. You should not 
have done this ; you should have told me," 

*'I should have told you 1" she cried impatiently, 
**How could I stop to tell you when I saw him 
strike my dog, my poor lame dog ?" 

"Gro in, darling, go in! There, there, calm 
yourself and go in." 

He spoke as if he had been trying to soothe an 
agitated child, for he saw by the convulsive heav- 
ing of her breast that the violent emotion would 
terminate in hysteria, as all womanly fury must, 
sooner or later. He half led, half carried her up a 
back staircase to her own room, and left her lyine 
on a sofa in her riding-habi;. He throstle 
broken whip into his pockety and then, setting his 
strong white teeth and clenching his fist,; went 
to. look for Stephen Hargraves. As he crossed 
the hall in his way out, he selected a stout leather* 
thonged hunting*whip from a stand of formidable 
implements. Steeve, the " Softy," was sitting on a 
horse-block when John re-entered the stable-yard. 
He was rubbing his shoulders with a very doleful 
£Etce, while a couple of grinning stable-boys, who 

T 2 



276 AUBORA FLOYD, 

hai perhaps witnessed hiB cliastisementi watched 
him from a respectful distance. They had no 
inclinatioii to go too near him just then, for the 
"Softy" had a phiyful habit of brandishing a big 
i[;lasp-knife when he felt himself aggrieved ; and 
the bravest lad in the stables had no wish to die 
from a stab in the abdomen, with the pleasant 
<5onviction that his murderer's heaviest punish- 
ment might be a fortnight's imprisonment, or an 
^easy fine. 

** Now, Mr, Hargraves,*' said John Mellish, lift- 
ing the " Softy " off the horse-block and planting 
him at a convenient distance for giving full play to 
the hunting-whip, " it wasn't Mrs. Mellish's busi- 
ness to horsewhip you, but it was her duty to let 
me do it for her ; so take that, you coward." 

The leathern thong whistled in the air, and 
curled about Steeve's shoulders; but John felt 
there was something despicable in the unequal 
contest. He threw the whip away, and still hold- 
ing him by the collar, conducted the " Softy " to 
the gates of the stable-yard. 

" You see that avenue," he said, pointing down 
a fair glade that stretched before them ; " it leads 
pretty straight out of the Park, and I strongly 



STEEVE HARGRAVES, THE. " SOFTY/' 27T 

tecommend you, Mr. Stephen Hargraves, to get tcT 
tlie end of it as fast as ever you can, and neVer ta 
show your ugly white face upon an inch of ground 
belonging to me again. D'ye hear?" 

" E-es, sir." 

"Stay! I suppose there's wages or something 
due to you." He took a handful of money from 
his waistcoat-pocket and threw it on the grounc^ 
sovereigns and half-crowns rolling hither and 
thither on the gravel-path ; then turning' on his 
lieel, he left the " Softy " to pick up the scattered 
treasure. Steeve Hargraves dropped on his 
knees, and groped about tiU he had found the last 
coin ; then, as he slowly counted the money from 
one hand into the other, his white face relapsed 
into a grin : John Mellish had given him gold and 
silver amounting to upwards of two years of his 
ordinary wages. 

He walked a few paces down the avenue, and 
then looking back shook his fist at the house he 
was leaving behind him. 

^^ You're a fine-spirited madam, Mrs. John 
Mellish, sure enough," he muttered ; " but never 
you give me a chance of doing you any mischief, 
or by the Lord, /owe? as I am, I'll do it! They 



278 ' AURORA FLOTD* 

flunk the ^ Softy's' up to naugbt^ pezliap& Wait 
a hit*' 

He took his money from his pocket again, and 
counted it once more, as he walked slowly towards 
the gates of the Park. 

It will be seen, therefore, that Aurora had two 
^lemieS) oi^ without and one within her pleasant 
home: oxie for ever brooding discontent and 
hatred within the holy circle of the domestia 
hearth; the other plotting rmn and rengeance 
without the walls c£ the citadel. 



279 



CHAPTEE Xm. 

TH£ SPRING MEETING. 

The early spring brought Locy Eloyd on a Tisit 
to bier cousin, a wondering witness of the bappi^ 
ness that reigned at Mellish Park 

Poor Lucy had expected to find Aurora held as 
something better than the dogi!^ and a little 
higher than the horses, in that Yorkshire housd- 
bold; and was considerably surprised to find her 
dark-eyed cousin a despotic and capricious i>K>T&- 
reign, reigmng with undisputed sway oyer erery 
creature, biped or quadruped^, upon the estate. 
She was surprised <o see the bright glow in her 
cheeks, the merry sparkle in her eyes ; . surprised 
to hear the light tread <^ her footstep, the gushing 
music of her laugh ;. surprised, in fact, to diseo^mr 
that, instead of weeping orer the dry bones of her 
dead lore for Talbot Bulstrode, Aurora had 
learned to lore her hnsbaood. 



280 AJOBORJL FLOTD. 

Hare I any need to be ashamed of my henune 
in that she had forgotten her straight-noeed, giay- 
eyed Cornigh lorer, who had set his pride uid his 
pedigree between himself and his affection, and 
had lored her at best with a reservation, although 
Heaven only knows how deady he had loved 
her? Have I any cause to blush for this po<»v 
impetuous giri, if, turning in the sickness of her 
sorr o w fu l heart with a sense of rdief and grati- 
iode to the honest ehelter of John's lore, ehe had 
quickly learnt to feel for him an affection which 
xepaid him a thousandfold for his long-suffering 
derotion ? Surely it would have been impossible 
fofr any true-hearted woman to withhold some 
such repayment for such a lore as that which, in 
every word, and look, and thought^ and deed, 
John Mellish bestowed upon his wife. How 
could she befor ever his creditor for such a bound- 
less debt? Are hearts like his common amongst 
our clay ? Is it a small thing to be beloved with 
this loyal and pure affection ? Is it laid so often 
at the feet of any mortal woman that she should 
spurn and trample upon the holy offering? 

He had loved ; and more, he had trusted her. 
He had trusted her, when the man who passion- 




THS SPRma HEETING. 281 

ately loved her had left her in an agony of doubt 
and despair. The cause of this lay in the differ- 
ence between the two men. John, Hellish had 
as high and stem a sense of honour as Talbot 
Sulstrode; but while the proud Comishman's 
strength of brain lay in the reflectiye feu^ulties, 
the Yorkshireman's acute intellect was strongest 
in its power of perception. Talbot drove himseU 
half mad with imagining what might be; John 
saw what was; and he saw, or fancied he saw, 
that the woman he loved was worthy of all love ; 
and he gave his peace and honour freely into her 
keeping 

• He had his reward. He had his reward in her 
frank womanly affection, and in the delight of 
seeing that she was happy ; no cloud upon her 
face, no shadow on her life, but ever^beaming joy 
in her eyes, ever-changing smiles upon her lips. 
She was happy in the calm security of her home, 
happy in that pleasant stronghold in which she 
was so fenced about and guarded by love and 
devotion. I do not know that she ever felt any 
romantic or enthusiastic love for this big York- 
shireman ; but I do know that from the first hour 
in which she laid her head upon his broad breast 



282 . AUBQEX IliQYIU 

A&e was true* to him-— true as a wife should be ; 
tnie in everj thought ; true in the merest shadow 
of a thought. A wide gulf yawned around the 
altar of her home, separating her from every 
other man in the uniyerse, and leaying her alone 
with that one maok. whom she had accepted as her 
husband. She had accepted him in the truest 
and purest sense 6f the word She had accepted 
hun from the hand of God, as the protector and 
dielterer of her life; and morning and nighi^ 
upon her knees, dbe thanked the gracious Creator 
who had made this man for her help-meet 

But after duly setting down all this, I have to 
ecmfess that poor John Melli^ was onelly hen- 
pecked. Suck big, blustering fellows are created 
to be the mueh-^ndunng subjects of petticoat 
government; and they carry the rosy garlands 
until their dying hour with a sublime unconscious- 
ness that those floral chains are not very easy to 
be broken. Your Httle man is seK-assertive, and 
for ever on his guard against womanly domination. 
All tyrannical husbands on record have been little 
men, &om Mr. Daniel Qiulp upwards; but who 
could ever convince a fellow of six foot two in his 
stockings that he was a&aid of his wife? He 



THE SFRINa MEETINa. 283 

submits to the pretty tjraut mth a quiet smile of 
resignation. ^What does it matter? She is sO 
little, so fragile ; he could break that tiny wrist 
with one twist of his big thumb and finger ; and 
in the mean time, tiU affairs get desperate, and 
such measures become necessary, it's as well to 
let her have her own way. 

John Hellish did not even debate the points 
He loved her, and he laid himself down to bd 
trampled upcJn by her gracious feet. Whatever 
she did or said was charmiDg, bewitching, and 
wonderful to him. If she ridiculed and laughed 
at him, her laughter was the sweetest harmony in 
creation; and it pleased him to think that bis 
absurdities could give birth to such music. If she 
lectured him, she arose to the sublimity of a 
priestess, and he listened to her and worshipped 
her as the most noble of living creatures. And 
with all this, his innate manliness of character 
preserved him from any taint of that quality our 
argot has christened spocTieifism. It was only 
those who knew him well and watched him closely 
who could fathom the full depths of his tender 
weakness. The noUest sentiments approach most 
nearly to the universal,, and^ thk love of John's 



284 AURORA FLOTD. 

was in a manner uniyersal. It was the love of 
husband, father, mother, brother, melted into one 
comprehensiye affection. He had a mother's weak 
ptide in Aurora, a mother's foolish vanity in the 
wonderful creature, the rwra avis he had won &om. 
her nest to be his wife. If Mrs. Hellish was com- 
plimented while John stood by, he simpered like 
a school-girl who blushes at a handsome man's first 
flatteries. I'm a&aid he bored his male acquaint- 
iance about " my wife :" her marvellous leap over 
the bullfinch; the plan she drew for the new 
stables, ''which the architect said was a better 
plan than he could have drawn himself sir, by 
Gad" (a clever man, that Doncaster architect) ; the 
surprising way in which she had discovered the 
feult in^the chestnut colt's off fore-leg ; the pencil 
«ketch she had made of her dog Bow-wow (" Sir 
Edwin Landseer might have been proud of such 
spirit and dash, sir "). All these things did the 
county gentlemen hear, until, perhaps, they grew 
a shade weary of John's talk of "my wife." But 
they were never weary of Aurora herself. She 
took her place at once among them ; and they 
bowed down to her and worshipped her, envying 
John Hellish the ownership of such a high-bred 



THE SPRING MEETING. 285 

filly, as I fear they were but likely, unconsciously, 
to designate my black-eyed heroine. 

The domain over which Aurora found herself 
empress was no inconsiderable one. John Hellish 
had inherited an estate which brought him an 
income of something between sixteen and seven- 
teen thousand a year. Far-away farms, upon wide 
Yorkshire wolds and fenny Lincolnshire flats, 
owned him master; and the intricate secrets of 
his possessions were scarcely known to himself, — 
known, perhaps, to none but his land-steward and 
solicitor, a grave gentleman who Uved in Don- 
caster, and drove about once a fortnight down to 
Mellish Park, much to the horror of its light- 
hearted master, to whom ** business " was a- terrible 
bugbear. Not that I would have the reader for a 
moment imagine John Mellish an empty-headed 
blockhead, with no comprehension save for his 
own daily pleasures. He was not a reading man^ 
nor a business man, nor a politician, nor a student 
of the natural sciences. There was an observatory 
in the Park; but John had fitted it up as a 
smoking-room, the revolving openings in the roof 
being very convenient for letting out the effluvia 
of his guests' cheroots and Havanas ; Mr. Mellish 



286 ' AUSCRA FLOYD. 

^caring for the stars veiy uracil after the fashion 
of that Assyrian monarch who was content to 
see them shine, and thank their Maker for their 
beanty. He was not a spiritualist; and nnless 
one of the tables at Mellish could have given him 
^*a tip" for the "Sellinger," or Great Ebor, he 
would have cared very little if every inch of 
wabut and rosewood in his house had grown 
oracular. But for aU this he was no fool ; he had 
that brightly clear intellect which very often 
aocompamee perfect honesty of purpose, and which 
is the very intellect of all others most successful 
in the discomfiture of all knavery. He was not a 
creature to despise, for his very weaknesses were 
manly. Perhaps Aurora felt this, and that it was 
something to rule over such a man. Sometimes, 
in an outburst of loving gratitude, she would 
nestle her handsome head upon his breast, — ^tall 
as she was, she was only tall enough to take 
Inciter under his wing, — ^and teU him that he wag 
the dearest and the best of men, and that, although 
she might love him to her dying day, she could 
never, never neveb love him half as much as he 
deserved. After which, half ashamed of herself 
for the sentimental declaration, she would altera 



THE SPEIKQ 3CEETING, 287 

nately ridicule, lecture^ and tyrannize over bim 
for the rest of the day* 

Lucy beheld this state of things with silent 
bewilderment. Could the woman who had once 
been loved by Talbot Bulstrode sink to Hmf 
The happy wife of a fair-haired Yorkshireman ; 
witli her fondest wishes concentred in her name- 
sake the bay fiUy, which was to run in a weight^ 
for-age race at the York Spring, and was entered 
for the ensuing Derby ; interested in a tan gallop, 
a new stable ; t-alking of mysterious but evidently 
all4mportant creatures, called by such names as 
Scott and Fobert and Ghiffiiey and Challoner ; and 
to all appearance utterly forgetful of the £Etct that 
there existed upon the earth a divinity with fathom- 
less gray eyes, known to mortals as the hdr of 
Bulstrode. Poor Lucy was like to have been driven 
well-nigh demented by the talk about this bay 
filly, Aurora, as the Spring Meeting drew near. 
She was taken to see her every moEmingby Aurora 
and John, who, in their anziety for the improve- 
ment of their favourite, looked at the animal upon 
each visit as if they expected some wonderful 
physical transformation to have occurred in the 
rtiUness of the night« The loose box in which tibue 



288 AUBORA FLOTD. 

filly was lodged was watched night and day by an 
amateur detective force of stable-boys and han- 
gers-on ; and John MelUsh once went so far as to 
dip a tumbler into the pail of water provided for 
the bay filly, Aurora^to ascertain, of his own expe* 
rience, that the crystal fluid was innocuous ; for 
he grew nervous as the eventful day drew nigh^ 
and was afraid of lurking danger to the filly from 
dark-minded touts who might have heard of her 
in London. I fear the touts troubled their heads 
very little about this graceful two-year old» 
though she had the blood of Old Melbourne and 
West Australian in her veins, to say nothing of 
other aristocracy upon the nfiatemal side. The 
suspicious gentlemen hanging about York and 
Doncaster ia those early April days were a great 
deal too much occupied with Lord Glasgow's lot» 
and John Scott's lot» and Lord Zetland's and 
Mr. Merry's lot, and other lots of equal distinction^ 
to have much time to prowl about Hellish Park, 
or peer into that meadow which the young man 
had caused to be surrounded by an eight-foot 
fence for the privacy of the Derby winner in 
future. Lucy declared the filly to be the loveliest 
of creatures, and safe to win. any number of caps 



the; spring meeting. 289 

and plates that might be offered for equine com- 
petition ; but she was always glad, when the daily 
visit was over, to find herself safely out of reach of 
those high-bred hind-legs, which seemed to possess 
a faculty for being in all four comers of the loose- 
box at one and the same moment. 

The first day of the Meeting came^ and. found 
half the Mellish household established at York : 
John and his family at an hotel near the betting- 
rooms ; and the trainer, his satellites, and the filly , 
at a little inn close to the Knavesmire. Archi- 
bald Floyd did his best to be interested in the 
event which was so interesting to his children ; 
but he freely confessed to his grandniece, Lucy, 
that he heartily wished the Meeting over, and the 
merits of the bay filly decided. She had stood 
her trial nobly, John said ; not winning with a 
rush, it is true ; in point of fact, being in a maimer 
beaten ; but evincing a power to %tay^ which pro- 
mised better for the future than any two-year-old 
velocity. When the saddling-bell rang, Aurora, 
her father, and Lucy were stationed in the balcony, 
a crowd of friends about them ; Mrs. Mellish, with 
a pencil in her hand, putting down all manner of 
impossible bets in her excitement, and making 

VOL. L U 



290 AURORA FLOYD. 

such a book as might have been preserved as a 
curiosity in sporting annals. John was pushing in 
and out of the ring below ; tumbling over small 
book-men in his agitation ; dashing from the ring 
to the weighing-house; and hanging about the 
small pale-faced boy who was to ride the filly as 
anxiously as if the jockey had been a prime 
minister, and John a family-man with half a dozen 
sons in need of Government appointments. I 
tremble to think how many bonuses, in the way of 
five-pound notes, John promised this pale-faced 
lad, on condition that the stakes (some small 
matter amounting to about sixty pounds) were 
pulled ofi" — pulled off where, I wonder ? — by the 
bay filly Aurora. If the youth had not been ox 
that preternatural order of beings who seem bom 
of an emotionless character to wear silk for the 
good of their fellow-men, his brain must certainly 
have been dazed by the variety of conflicting 
directions which John Mellish gave him within 
the critical last quarter of an hour ; but having 
received his orders early that morning from the 
trainer, accompanied with a warning not to suffer 
himself to be tewed (Yorkshire patois for worried) 
by anything Mr. Mellish might say, the sallow- 



THE SPRING MEETING. 291 

complexioned lad walked about in the calm 
serenity of innocence, — ^there are honest jockeys 
in the world, — and took his seat in the saddle with 
as even a pulse as if he had been about to ride 
in an omnibus. 

* 

There were some people upon the Stand that 
morning who thought the face of Aurora Mellish 
as pleasant a sight as the smooth greensward of the 
Knavesmire, or the best horse-flesh in the county 
of York. All forgetful of herself in her excite- 
ment, with her natural vivacity multiplied by the 
animation of the scene before her, she was more 
than usually lovely ; and Archibald Floyd looked 
at her with a fond emotion, so intermingled with 
gratitude to Heaven for the happiness of his 
daughter's destiny as to be almost akin to pain. 
She was happy ; she was thoroughly happy at last, 
this child of his dead Eliza, this sacred charge 
left to him by the woman he had loved ; she was 
happy, and she was safe; he could go to his 
grave resignedly to-morrow, if it pleased God, — 
knowing this. Strange thoughts, perhaps, for a 
crowded race-course ; but our most solemn fancies 
do not come always in solemn places. Nay, it 
is often in the midst of crowds and confusion that 

u 2 



292 AURORA FLOTD. 

our souls Wing their loftiest flights, and the saddest 
memories return to us. You see a man sitting at 
some theatrical entertainment, with a grave, 
abstracted face, over which no change of those 
around him has any influence. He may be think- 
ing of his dead wife, dead ten years ago ; he may 
be acting over well-remembered scenes of joy and 
sorrow ; he may be recalling cruel words, never 
to be atoned for upon earth, angry looks gone to be 
registered against him in the skies ; while his chil- 
dren are laughing at the clown on the stage below 

• 

him. He may be moodily meditating inevitable 
bankruptcy or coming ruin, holding imaginary 
meetings with his creditors, and contemplating 
prussic acid upon the refusal of his certificate, 
while his eldest daughter is crying with Pauline 
Deschappelles. So Archibald Floyd, while the 
|numbers were going up, and the jockeys being 
^weighed, and the book-men clamouring below him, 
leaned over the broad ledge of the stone balcony, 
and, looking far away across the grassy amphi- 
theatre, thought of the dead wife who had be- 
queathed to him this precious daughter. 

The bay filly, Aurora, was beaten ignominiously. 
Mrs. Mellish turned white with despair as she saw 



THE SPRING MEETING. 293 

the amber jacket, black belt, and blue cap crawling 
in at the heels of the ruck, the jockey looking pale 
defiance at the bystanders : as who should say that 
the filly had never been meant to win, and that 
the defeat of to-day was but an artfuUy-concocted 
rvse whereby fortunes were to be made in the 
future? John Mellish, something used to such 
disappointments, crept away to hide his discom- 
fiture outside the ring ; but Aurora dropped her 
card and pencil, and, stamping her foot upon the 
stone flooring of the balcony, told Lucy and the 
banker that it was a shame, and that the boy 
must have sold the race, as it was impossible the 
filly could have been fairly beaten. As she turned 
to say this, her cheeks flushed with passion, and 
her eyes flashing bright indignation on any one 
who might stand in the way to receive the angry 
electric light, she became aware of a pale face and 
a pair of gray eyes earnestly regarding her from 
the threshold of an open window two or three 
paces off; and in another moment both she and 
her father had recognized Talbot Bulstrode. 

The young man saw that he was recognized, 
and approached them, hat in hand, — ^very, very 
pale, as Lucy always remembered, — and, with a 



294 AURORA FLOYD. 

voice that trembled as he spoke, wished the banker 
and the two ladies " Good day." 

And it was thus that they met, these two who 
had "parted in silence and tears," more than 
** half broken-hearted," to sever, as they thought, 
for eternity ; it was thus — ^upon this commonplace, 
prosaic, half-guinea Grand Stand — ^that Destiny 
brought them once more face to face. 

A year ago, and how often in the spring 
twilight Aurora Floyd had pictured her possible 
meeting with Talbot Bulstrode ! He would come 
upon her suddenly, perhaps, in the still moonlight, 
and she would swoon away and die at his feet of 
the unendurable emotion. Or they would meet 
in some crowded assembly; she dancing, laughing 
mth hollow, simulated mirth; and the shock of 
one glance of those eyes would slay her in her 
painted glory of jewels and grandeur. How often, 
ah, how often she had acted the scene and felt the 
anguish ! — only a year ago, less than a year ago, 
ay, even so lately as on that balmy September 
day when she had lain on the rustic couch at the 
Chateau d'Arques, looking down at the fair Nor- 
mandy landscape, with faithful John at watch by 
her side, the tame goats browsing upon the grassy 



THE SPRING MEETING. 295 

platform behind her, and pretematurally ancient 
French children teasing the mild, long-suftering 
animals. And to-day she met him with her thoughts 
so full of the horse which had just been beaten, that 
she scarcely knew what she said to her sometime 
lover. Aurora Floyd was dead and buried, and 
Aurora Mellish, looking critically at Talbot Bul- 
strode, wondered how any one could have ever 
gone near to the gates of death for the love of 
him. 

It was Talbot who grew pale at this unlooked- 
for encounter ; it was Talbot whose voice was 
shaken in the utterance of those few every-day 
syllables which common courtesy demanded of 
him. The captain had not so easily learned to 
forget. He was older than Aurora, and he had 
reached the age of two-and-thirty without having 
ever loved woman, only to be the more desperately 
attacked by the fatal disease when his time came. 
He suffered acutely at that sudden meeting. 
Wounded in his pride by her serene indiflTerence, 
dazzled afresh by her beauty, mad with jealous 
fiiry at the thought that he had lost her. Captain 
Bulstrode's feelings were of no very enviable 
nature ; and if Aurora had ever wished to avenge 



296 AURORA FLOYD. 

that cruel scene at Felden Woods, her hour of 
vengeance had most certainly come. But she was 
too generous a creature to have harboured such a 
thought. She had submitted in all humility to 
Talbot's decree; she had accepted his decision, 
and had believed in its justice ; and seeing his 
agitation to-day, she was sorry for him. She 
pitied him, with a tender, matronly compassion ; 
such as she, in the safe harbour of a happy home, 
might be privileged to feel for this poor wanderer, 
still at sea on life's troubled ocean. Love, and 
the memory of love, must indeed have died before 
we can feel like this.' The terrible passion must 
have died that slow and certain death, from the 
grave of which no haunting ghost ever returns to 
torment the survivors. It was, and it is not. 
Aurora might have been shipwrecked and cast on 

a desert island with Talbot Bulstrode, and might 
have lived ten years in his company, without ever 
feeling for ten seconds as she had felt for him once. 
With these impetuous and impressionable people, 
who live quickly, a year is sometimes as twenty 
years ; so Aurora looked back at Talbot Bulstrode 
across a gulf which stretched for weary miles be- 
tween them, and wondered if they had really ever 



THE SPRING MEETING. 297 

stood side by side, allied by Hope and Love, in 

the days that were gone. 

While Aurora was thinking of these things, as 
well as a little of the bay filly, and while Talbot, 
half choked by a thousand confused emotions, 
tried to appear pretematurally at his ease, John 
Mellish, having refreshed his spirits with bottled 
beer, came suddenly upon the party, and slapped 
the captain on the back. 

He was not jealous, this happy John. Secure 
in his wife's love and truth, he was ready to face 
a regiment of her old admirers ; indeed, he rather 
delighted in the idea of avenging Aurora upon 
this cowardly lover. Talbot glanced involuntarily 
at the members of the York constabulary on the 
course below; wondering how they would act if 
he were to fling John Mellish over the stone 
balcony, and do a murder then and there. He 
was thinking this while John was nearly wringing 
off his hand in cordial salutation, and asking 
what the deuce had brought him to the York 
Spring. 

Talbot explained rather lamely that, being 
knocked up by his Parliamentary work, he had 
come down to spend a few days with an old 



298 AURORA FLOYD. 

brother-officer, Captain Hunter, who had a place 
between York and Leeds. 

Mr. Mellish declared that nothing could be 
more lucky than this. He knew Hunter well; 
the two men must join them at dinner that day ; 
and Talbot must give them a week at the Park 
after he left the captain's place. 

Talbot murmured some vague protestation of 
the impossibility of this, to which John paid no 
attention whatever, hustling his sometime rival 
away from the ladies in his eagerness to get back 
to the ring, where he had to complete his book for 
the next race. 

So Captain Bulstrode was gone once more, and 
throughout the brief interview no one had cared to 
notice Lucy Floyd, who had been pale and red by 
turns half a dozen times within the last ten minutes. 

John and Talbot returned after the start, with 
Captain Hunter, who was brought on to the stand 
to be presented to Aurora, and who immediately 
entered into a very animated discussion upon the 
day's racing. How Captain Bulstrode abhorred 
this idle babble of horse-flesh; this perpetual 
jargon, alike in every mouth — ^from Aurora's rosy 
Cupid's bow to the tobacco-tainted lips of the 



THE SPRING MEETING. 299 

book-men in the ring! Thank Heaven, this was 
not his wife who knew all the slang of the course, 
and, with lorgnette in hand, was craning her swan- 
like throat to catch sight of a bend in the Knaves- 
mire and the horse that had a lead of half a mile. 
Why had he ever consented to come into this 
accursed horse-racing county? Why had he 
deserted the Cornish miners, even for a week? 
Better to be wearing out his brains over Dryasdust 
pamphlets and Parliamentary minutes than to be 
here ; desolate amongst this shallow-minded, cla- 
morous multitude, who have nothing to do but to 
throw up caps and cry huzza for any winner of any 
race. Talbot, as a bystander, could not but remark 
this, and draw from this something of a iphiloso- 
phical lesson on life. He saw that there was 
always the same clamour and the same rejoicing 
in the crowd, whether the winning jockey wore 
blue and black belt, yellow and black cap, white 
with scarlet spots, or any other variety of colour, 
even to dismal sable; and he could but wonder 
how this was. Did the unlucky speculators run 
away and hide themselves while the uplifted voices 
were rejoicing ? When the welkin was rent with 
the name of Caractacus or Tim Whiffler, where 



300 



AURORA FLOYD. 



were the men who had backed Buekstone or the 
Marquis unflinchingly up to the dropping of the 
flag and the ringing of the bell ? When Thormanby 
came in with a rush, where were the wretched 
creatures whose fortunes hung on " the Yankee " or 
Wizard ? They were voiceless, these poor unlucky 
ones, crawling away with sick white fiwjes to gather 
in groups, and explain to each other, with stable 
jargon intermingled with oaths, how the victory 
just over ought not to have been, and never could 
have been, but for some un-looked-for and prepos- 
terous combination of events never before witnessed 
upon any mortal course. How little is ever seen of 
the losers in any of the great races run upon this 
earth 1 For years and years the name of Louis 
Napoleon is an empty sound, signifying nothing ; 
when, lo, a few master strokes of policy a,nd finesse, 
a Utile juggling with those pieces of pasteboard out 
of which are built the shaky card-palaces men call 
empires, and creation rings with the same name ; 
the outsider emerges from the ruck, and the purple 
jacket spotted with golden bees is foremost in the 
mighty race. 

Talbot Bulstrode leaned with folded arms upon 
the stone balustrade, looking down at the busy 



THE SPRING MEETING. " 301 

life below him, and thinking of these things. 
Pardon him for his indulgence in dreary platitudes 
and worn-out sentimentalities. He was a desolate, 
purposeless man; entered for no race himself; 
scratched for the matrimonial stakes ; embittered 
by disappointment ; soured by doubt and suspicion. 
He had spent the dull winter months upon the 
Continent, having no mind to go down to Bui- 
strode to encounter his mother's sympathy and his 
cousin Constance Trevyllian's chatter. He was 
unjust enough to nourish a secret dislike to that 
young lady for the good service she had done him 
by revealing Aurora's flight. 

Are we ever really grateful to the people who 
tell us of the iniquity of those we love ? Are we 
ever really just to the kindly creatures who give 
us friendly warning of our danger ? No, never ! 
We hate them ; always involuntarily reverting to 
them as the first causes of our anguish ; always 
repeating to ourselves that, had they been silent, 
that anguish need never have been ; always ready 
to burst forth in our wild rage with the mad cry, 
that " it is better to be much abused than but to 
know't a little." When the friendly Ancient 
drops his poisoned hints into poor Othello's ear, it 



302 AURORA FLOYD. 

is not Mistress Desdemona, but lago himself, 
whom the noble Moor first has a mind to strangle. 
If poor innocent Constance Trevyllian had been 
bom the veriest cur in the county of Cornwall, 
she would have had a better chance of vdnning 
Talbot's regard than she had now. 

Why had he come into Yorkshire ? I left that 
question unanswered just now, for I am ashamed 
to tell the reasons which actuated this unhappy 
man. He came, in a paroxysm of curiosity, to 
learn what kind of life Aurora led with her hus- 
band, John Mellish. He had suffered horrible 
distractions of mind upon this subject ; one moment 
imagining her the most despicable of coquettes, 
ready to marry any man who had a fair estate and 
a good position to offer her, and by-and-by depict- 
ing her as some white-robed Iphigenia, led a 
passive victim to the sacrificial shrine. So, when 
happening to meet his goodnatiired brother-ofBcer 
at the United Service Club, he had consented 
to run down to Captain Hunter's country place, 
for a brief respite from Parliamentary minutes and 
red-tape, the artful hypocrite had never owned to 
himself that he was burning to hear tidings of 
his false and fickle love, and that it was some 



THE SPRING MEETING. 303 

lingering fumes of the old intoxication that carried 
him down to Yorkshire. But now, now that he 
met her — ^met her, the heartless, abominable 
creature, radiant and happy — mere simulated 
happiness and feverish mock radiance, no doubt, 
but too well put on to be quite pleasing to him,— 
now he knew her. He knew her at last, the wicked 
enchantress, the soulless siren. He knew that 
she had never loved him ; that she was of course 
powerless to love ; good for nothing but to wreath 
her white arms and flash the dark splendour of 
her eyes for weak man's destruction ; fit for nothing 
but to float in her beauty above the waves that con- 
cealed the bleached bones of her victims. Poor 
John Mellish I Talbot reproached himself for his 
hardness of heart in nourishing one spiteful feeling 
towards a man who was so deeply to be pitied. 

When the race was done, Captain Bulstrode 
turned, and beheld the black-eyed sorceress in 
the midst of a group gathered about a grave Patri- 
arch with gray hair and the look of one accustomed 
to command. 

This grave Patriarch was John Pastern. 

I write his name with respect, even as it was 
reverentially whispered there, till, travelling from 
lip to lip, every one present knew that a great man 



804 AURORA FLOYD. 

was amongst 'them. A very quiet, nnassnming 
veteran, sitting with his womankind about him,— 
his wife and daughter, as I think, — self-possessed 
and grave, while men were busy with his name in 
the crowd below, and while tens of thousands were 
staked in trusting dependence on his acumen. 
What golden syllables might have fallen from those 
oracular lips, had the veteran been so pleased! 
What hundreds would have been freely bidden for 
a word, a look, a nod, a wink, a mere significant 
pursing-up of the lips from that great man ! What 
is the fable of the young lady who discoursed 
pearls and diamonds to a truth such as this ? 
Pearls and diamonds must be of large size which 
would be worth the secrets of those Eichmond 
stables, the secrets which Mr. Pastern might tell 
if he chose. Perhaps it is the knowledge of 
this which gives him a calm, almost clerical, 
gravity of manner. People come to him and fawn 
upon him, aud tell him that such and such a hprse 
from his stable has won, or looks safe to win ; and 
he nods pleasantly, thankiug them for the kind 
information; while perhaps his thoughts are far 
away on Epsom Downs or Newmarket Heath, win- 
ning future Derbys and Two Thousands with colts 
that are as yet unfoaled. 



THE SPRING MEETDTG. 305 

John MeUish is on intimate terms with the great 
man, to whom he presents Aurora, and of whom 
he asks advice upon a matter that has been 
troubling him for some time. His trainer's health 
is failing him, and he wants assistance in the 
stables ; a younger man, honest and clever. Does 
j\Ir. Pastern know such a one ? 

The veteran tells him, after due consideration, 
that he does know of a young man ; honest, he 
believes, as times go, who was once employed in 
the Eichmond stables, and who had written to him 
only a few days before, asking for his influence in 
getting him a situation. " But the lad's name has 
slipped my memory," added Mr. Pastern; "he 
was but a lad when he was with me ; but, bless my 
soul, that's ten years ago ! PU look up his letter, 
when I go home, and write to you about him. I 
Imow he's clever, and I believe he's honest ; and 
I shall be only too happy," concluded the old 
gentleman, gallantly, " to do anything to oblige 
Mrs. MeUish." 

END OP VOL. I. 



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