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 himself in the biggest chambers 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 Véfour’s, Philippe’s, the Trois Frères, the Maison Dorée, and the Café de Paris. His big voice was heard at every expensive dining place in Paris, ordering “Toos killyar de mellyour: vous 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 cafés chantants, listening to songs that always seemed set to the same melody. He haunted the circuses, and was well-nigh in love with a fair manège rider, who had black eyes, and reminded him of Aurora; till, upon buying the most powerful opera-glass that the Rue de Rivoli could afford, he discovered that the lady’s face was an inch deep in a certain white wash called blanc 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 ground, and trodden the lenses to powder with his heel, in his passion of despair: better to have been forever deceived, to have gone on believing that woman to be like Aurora, and to have gone to that circus every night until his hair grew white, but not with age, and until he pined away and died.
The party at Felden Woods was a very joyous one. The voices of children made the house pleasant; noisy lads from Eton and Westminster clambered about the balustrades of the staircases, and 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. He 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 her. So the proud Cornishman was happy, and gave himself up to his happiness without further protest.
Did Aurora love him? Did she make him due return for the passionate devotion, the blind adoration? 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 betrothed husband, suppressing at least all outward token of the tastes that were so unpleasant to him. No more copies of Bell’s Life littered the ladies’ morning-room at Felden; and when Andrew Floyd asked Aurora to ride to meet with him, his cousin refused the offer which would once have been so welcome. Instead of following the Croydon hounds, Miss Floyd was content to drive Talbot and Lucy in a basket-carriage through the frost-bespangled countryside. Lucy was always the companion and confidante of the lovers; it was hard for her to hear their happy talk of the bright future stretching far away before them—stretching down, down the shadowy aisles of Time, to an escutcheoned 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!—she was to join. But she bore her cross meekly, this pale Elaine of modern days; and she never told Talbot Bulstrode that she had gone mad and loved him, and was fain 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 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 lived 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 lived 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 love of Sir Lancelot, and pined and died.
Surely the secret of many sorrows lies in this. How many a grief has been bred of idleness and leisure! How many a Spartan
