“Well, well,” said Aurora, relentingly, “I know how faithful 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, gave the restless ponies their head; 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 from the carriage and followed them across the hall. Aurora was on the lowest step of the broad staircase before he spoke.
“Aurora,” he said, “one word before you go upstairs.”
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, dog-fancier and rat-catcher, had not yet died out of the dark orbs. Talbot Bulstrode 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-dieu chair, and playing nervously with the carved arabesques of the walnut-wood framework.
“About which man?”
This might have been prevarication in some 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?” 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 hundred at Thermopylae, or the six hundred at Balaklava. He loved her, this unhappy 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 spoke 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 a workhouse or drop on the high-road; but, you 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 was a recklessness about this speech that jarred upon Talbot, but he could not very well take objection to it; besides, it was leading away from the subject upon which he was so eager to be satisfied.
“But that man, Aurora—who is he?”
“A dog-fancier.”
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 answered; “whether it’s the curate of a new chapel with medieval 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 home for the children of indigent lucifer-match sellers; or a lecturer upon political economy, or Shelley and Byron, or upon Charles Dickens and the Modern 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 evangelical, 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 know that any donation Miss Floyd may be pleased to afford will be equally acceptable. If 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.”
“How, then, did you come to know him?”
She looked at him for a moment; steadily, unflinchingly, with a thoughtful expression in that ever-changing countenance; looked as if she were mentally debating some point. Then rising suddenly, she gathered her shawl about her, and walked towards the door. She paused upon the threshold, and said—
“This cross-questioning is scarcely pleasant, Captain Bulstrode.
