Aurora Floyd

Aurora Floyd

By M. E. Braddon.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. I: How a Rich Banker Married an Actress
4. II: Aurora
5. III: What Became of the Diamond Bracelet
6. IV: After the Ball
7. V: John Mellish
8. VI: Rejected and Accepted
9. VII: Aurora’s Strange Pensioner
10. VIII: Poor John Mellish Comes Back Again
11. IX: How Talbot Bulstrode Spent His Christmas
12. X: Fighting the Battle
13. XI: At the Château d’Arques
14. XII: Steeve Hargraves, the “Softy”
15. XIII: The Spring Meeting
16. XIV: “Love Took Up the Glass of Time, and Turned It in His Glowing Hands”
17. XV: Mr. Pastern’s Letter
18. XVI: Mr. James Conyers
19. XVII: The Trainer’s Messenger
20. XVIII: Out in the Rain
21. XIX: Money Matters
22. XX: Captain Prodder
23. XXI: “He Only Said, I Am A-Weary.”
24. XXII: Still Constant
25. XXIII: On the Threshold of Darker Miseries
26. XXIV: Captain Prodder Carries Bad News to His Niece’s House
27. XXV: The Deed That Had Been Done in the Wood
28. XXVI: At the Golden Lion
29. XXVII: “My Wife! My Wife! What Wife? I Have No Wife.”
30. XXVIII: Aurora’s Flight
31. XXIX: John Mellish Finds His Home Desolate
32. XXX: An Unexpected Visitor
33. XXXI: Talbot Bulstrode’s Advice
34. XXXII: On the Watch
35. XXXIII: Captain Prodder Goes Back to Doncaster
36. XXXIV: The Discovery of the Weapon with Which James Conyers Had Been Slain
37. XXXV: Under a Cloud
38. XXXVI: Reunion
39. XXXVII: The Brass Button by Crosby, Birmingham
40. XXXVIII: Off the Scent
41. XXXIX: Talbot Bulstrode Makes Atonement for the Past
42. Colophon
43. Uncopyright

Imprint

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I

How a Rich Banker Married an Actress

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 meadows, the still ponds of limpid water, the trim hedges, and the smooth winding roads; undulating hilltops, melting into the purple distance; labouring men’s cottages gleaming white from the surrounding foliage; solitary roadside inns with brown thatched roofs and moss-grown stacks of lopsided chimneys; noble mansions hiding behind 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 schoolhouses: 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 façade of a mighty redbrick 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 aflame 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 afire.

The stately redbrick mansion belongs to Maister Floyd, as he is called in the honest patois of the Kentish rustics; to Archibald Martin Floyd, of the great banking-house of Floyd, Floyd, and Floyd, Lombard Street, City.

The Kentish rustics know very little of this City banking-house, for Archibald Martin, the senior 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 families and country houses; both owing their fortune to the rich uncle, who had found places in his countinghouse for them some thirty years before, when they were tall, rawboned, 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 countinghouse; but they very soon followed that wise relative’s example, and dropped the formidable prefix. “We’ve nae need to tell these sootherran bodies that we’re Scotche,” Alick remarked to his brother, as he wrote his name for the first time A. Floyd, all short.

The Scottish banking-house had thriven wonderfully in the hospitable English capital. Unprecedented success 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