“I mourn’d the huntress of Cromla, the sunbeam
Of beauty; who must no more on our hills appear,
But rise on the waves of the north, to light
The stranger’s hall.”
“Have you any commands to Mrs. Montgomery, my Lord?” inquired Edmund, who
was writing at a small table, while most of our party were engaged at a
larger one with breakfast.
“Oh yes!” said Lord Arandale. “Pray tell her that I shall send Lauson
over to the Craigs: indeed that I shall go there myself, after the
races.”
Julia and Frances now entered.
Shortly after, rising and going towards Edmund, he bent over the table
and said, in an under tone, “I wish you would just tell my sister (it
will save me a letter, and I am much hurried) that the Marquis of H⸺ has
declared his intention of making proposals for Julia, (in due time,) and
that, I think she had better write to Lord L⸺. I wish he could be at
home. Yet, the connexion is so very eligible that all unnecessary delays
should be avoided. Julia’s own pretensions, in fact, rank so high, that
the peerage affords few that can be termed equal matches for her. Her
affections cannot be pre-engaged?” he added, in a sort of consulting
whisper. “Henry behaves very foolishly; but, I should hope, there was no
attachment on her side. The thing, however, must be put an end to!”
Lord Arandale returned to the breakfast table, and left our hero, as
he supposed, writing. Julia was the only person who observed that he
remained in the very same attitude, and without the slightest motion,
till the carriages drove up. She contrived in the general move, to pass
near the table at which he sat, where, pausing a moment, she said, “Are
you writing to grandmamma, Edmund?”
He had been quite pale when she first approached, and evidently had not
observed her. He started at the sound of her voice, and looked at her
without appearing to comprehend the purport of her enquiry, but made no
reply. “Are you writing to grandmamma?” she repeated, “because, I wish——”
He examined his paper two or three times from top to bottom, and then
replied, “I—was—”
Henry came up at the moment, and, offering to Julia his arm, which
she now dare not refuse, hurried her to the carriage. She perceived,
with much vexation, that he wore, drawn across his breast, the scarf
he had snatched from her. He continued, in defiance of a whispered
remonstrance on her part, to sport it for some hours. He knew that Edmund
was well aware to whom the scarf belonged. At length, Lord Arandale
perceiving what was going on, insisted on the scarf being resigned. The
Earl restored it himself to Julia, with a reproachful glance; to which
she replied, that the scarf had been both taken and worn without her
permission.
“Men seldom take liberties they do not expect will, at least, be
pardoned,” replied his lordship, with some severity of countenance.
Why Henry should be thus anxious to have it supposed that he was
acceptable to Julia, while he took so little pains to become really so,
is a mystery which time only can solve.
Our hero did not appear on the stand that day; although he was seen
riding at a distance on the course. At the ordinary he went in to dinner
without taking charge of any lady. At the ball, indeed, he was again
to be found near Julia. After a few languid attempts at conversation,
however, he seated himself beside her in perfect silence, till the
Marquis of H⸺ coming towards them with a gay and delighted air, claimed
her hand for the first set. She stood up to dance, and Edmund almost
immediately left the room.
When Edmund retired that night to his own apartment he took himself
severely to task: he could assuredly acquit himself of deliberate
efforts, intentions, or even wishes to gain Julia’s affections beyond the
limit of friendship; yet he had in every moment of temptation yielded
to intoxicating hopes; and to attempt to distinguish between such hopes
and wilful wishes he found was mere sophistry: he determined therefore to
fly without again beholding Julia. As yet, her innocent heart believed
all its feelings friendship. She would think him unkind, ungrateful, and
forget him, without suffering any of those terrible contentions of spirit
which he endured. He dare not sleep, lest he should awake under the
dominion of a less virtuous impulse.
Without therefore retiring to bed, even for an hour, he commenced
instantly and hastily his preparations for departure, confusedly
ruminating the while:—What was he about to do? Could he leave Julia
thus, to the persecutions of Henry, to the persuasions of the Marquis?
and he drew his leg out of the boot into which it had been half way
introduced.—But he was confident, he told himself once more, for the
hundredth time, that she had already rejected Henry, and that she would
reject the Marquis of H⸺. His foot again entered the boot top, and, now,
completed its descent.