It was so; he was falling in love with Aurora. The more he protested against her, the more determinedly 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 forever in his mind, until he grew the veriest slave of the lovely vision, which he only evoked in order to endeavour to exorcise.
“How could he take her down to Bulstrode, and introduce her to his father and mother?” he 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 thoroughbred 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. If he had known of that weary game which Lucy was forever 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 forever ended.
Heaven knows how long Talbot Bulstrode might have done battle with his growing passion, had it not been for 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 ladies as Mr. Mellish, an old friend and schoolfellow. The stranger stared with such open-mouthed admiration at Miss Floyd’s black eyes, that the captain turned round upon him almost savagely, as he asked what had brought him to Brighton.
“The hunting season, my boy. Tired of Yorkshire; 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 tomorrow morning if you like. Harriers meet at eleven—Dyke Road. I’ve a gray that’ll suit you to a nicety—carry my weight, and as easy to sit as your armchair.”
Talbot hated his friend for talking of horses; he felt a jealous terror of him. This, perhaps, was the sort of man whose society would be agreeable to Aurora—this big, empty-headed Yorkshireman, with his babble about his stud and hunting appointments. 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. He was a man of thirty years of age 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 public academy of the muscular Christianity school. I think the Rev. Charles Kingsley would have delighted in this big, hearty, broad-chested young Englishman, with brown hair brushed away from an open forehead, and a thick auburn moustache bordering a mouth forever ready to expand into a laugh. Such a laugh, too! such a hearty and sonorous peal, that the people on the Parade turned round 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 Yorkshireman. 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, strolling a little further on, the party met with Archibald Floyd, who had
