“Your 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 round 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 husband’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! If Talbot Raleigh Bulstrode could have known that the family name was Prodder; that one member of the haughty house had passed his youth in the pleasing occupations 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 disdainful creature, walking before him in all the majesty of her beauty, had once kept a chandler’s shop in an obscure street in Liverpool, and for aught anyone but the banker knew, kept it still! But this was a knowledge which had wisely been kept even from Aurora herself, who knew little except that, despite of having been born with that allegorical silver spoon in her mouth, she was poorer than other girls, inasmuch as she was motherless.
Mrs. Alexander, Lucy, and the captain overtook the others upon a rustic bridge, where Talbot stopped to rest. Aurora was leaning over the rough wooden balustrade, looking lazily at the water.
“Did your favourite win the race, Miss Floyd?” he asked, as he watched the effect of her profile against the sunlight; not a very beautiful profile certainly, but for the long black eyelashes, and the radiance under them, which their darkest shadows could never hide.
“Which favourite?” she said.
“The horse you spoke to me about the other night—Thunderbolt; did he win?”
“No.”
“I am very sorry to hear it.”
Aurora looked up at him, reddening angrily. “Why so?” she asked.
“Because I thought you were interested in his success.”
As Talbot said this, he observed, for the first time, that Archibald Floyd was near enough to overhear their conversation, and, furthermore that he was regarding his daughter with even more than his usual watchfulness.
“Do not talk to me of racing; it annoys papa,” Aurora said to the captain, dropping her voice. Talbot bowed. “I was right, then,” he thought; “the turf is the skeleton. I dare say Miss Floyd has been doing her best to drag her father’s name into the Gazette, and yet he evidently loves her to distraction; while I—” There was something 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 father; while I, who am a model to all the elder sons 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 countryside that the family 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 not 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’ offices;—shreds of fricandeaux 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 with him the noisy boy who was just going to Eton, and who was passionately attached to his cousin Aurora; and whether it was owing to the influence of this young gentleman, 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 father 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. Aurora’s smiles seemed to shed a revivifying influence 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 fair-haired ideal,” he thought, “but I cannot help admiring this extraordinary girl. She
