*CHAPTER XI.*
The rocky guardians of the clime
Frown on me, as they menaced death;
While echoing still in measured time
The gallop of my courser's hoof,
They hoarsely bid me stand aloof.
Where goest thou, madman? Where no shade
Of tree or tent shall screen thy head.
Still on--still on; I turn my eyes--
The cliffs no longer mock the skies:
The peaks shrink back, and hide their brow,
Each other's lofty peaks below.
FROM THE POETRY OF MICKIEWICZ.
As if inspired by fortune, or my good genius, Lady Louisa began thus, in
a low voice--
"By the way, Mr. Norcliff, you were to have shown me the house in which
Alexander Selkirk--or Robinson Crusoe--was born in 1676, I think you
said?"
"Oh; it is only a cottage, consisting of one storey and a garret; but
the next time we come to Largo, I shall show you his flip-can, musket,
and a lock of his hair."
"Ah, that reminds me, Mr. Norcliff, that you must return to me the lock
of hair which you obtained when inspired with romance by Miss
Calderwood's legend last night."
"Lady Louisa, I implore your permission to retain it," said I, in a low
voice.
"To what end, or for what reason?" she asked, with a furtive smile.
"I am going far, far away, and it will serve as a memento of many happy
days, and of one whom I shall never cease to remember, but with----"
"Why, you don't mean to say that--that you are serious?" she asked, in a
voice that betrayed emotion, while my heart rose to my trembling lips,
and I turned to gaze upon her with an unmistakable expression of love
and tenderness, which made her colour come and go visibly.
Reassuring herself, she began to smile.
"Perhaps your creed is a soldier's one?" said she, with a little
convulsive laugh, as she tied her veil under her chin.
"A soldier's! I hope so; but in what sense do you mean?"
"'To love all that is lovely, and all that you can,' as the song has
it."
I laid a hand lightly on her soft arm, and was about to say something
there could be no misconstruing, while a film seemed to pass over my
eyes, and my soul rose to my lips; but Pitblado, who, whether he was
listening or not, had a sharp eye on the cattle, now said--
"Beg your pardon, sir, but I don't like the look of that leader."
"The blood mare with the white star on her forehead," said I, touching
her lightly on the flank with the whip, and making her curvet; "she is
usually very quiet."
"Perhaps so, sir; but she's always clapping her ears close
down--throwing her eyes backward, and showing the whites. She's up to
mischief, I'm certain."
"Jump down, then," said I, "shorten the curb, and lengthen the traces by
a hole or two."
This was done in a trice; Willie sprang into his seat like a harlequin,
and away we went from the Kirktoun of Largo at a rasping pace.
"She's a lovely animal, with pasterns like a girl's ankles; but she's
clapping her tail a little too close in for my taste, sir, and she's up
to some devilry," persisted Pitblado, and ere long his surmises proved
correct.
"We've left the drag behind; distanced it clean already," said I.
"It's a heavier drag than the regimental one at head-quarters, sir,"
said Willie, taking the hint to look back now; but the sound of hoofs or
wheels could no longer be detected in the still evening air behind.
Full of blood and ill-natured, over-corned, and anxious to get back to
their stables, the speed of the animals increased to a pace that soon
became alarming, and the light vehicle to which they were harnessed, as
I have said, a tandem, swept along like a toy at their heels, while we
flew eastward by Halhill; and, ere we reached the woods of Balcarris,
where the road turns due north, and round by the base of Dunnikier Law,
it was evident that they were fairly and undoubtedly off!
The leader had got the bit between her teeth, and, when descending a
hill-side, the splinter-bar goaded the wheeler to madness. All my
strength, together with Pitblado's, failed to arrest their mad career,
and, while imploring Lady Louisa, who clung to me, "to hold fast, to sit
still," and so forth, I bent all my energies rather to guide them along,
and avoid collisions, than to attempt to stop them; and, to add to our
troubles, the patent drag gave way.
Luckily, the road was smooth, and free from all obstruction.
"To the left, sir--to the left," shouted Pitblado, as we came to a place
where two roads branched off; "that is Drumhead. Our way lies due west."
Pitblado might as well have shouted to the wind; the infuriated brutes
took their own way, and tore at an awful pace due north. Horses
pasturing by the wayside trotted to the rear, and sheep browsing in the
fields fled at our approach; cattle kicked up their heels, and scampered
away in herds. House-dogs barked, terriers yelled, and pursued us
open-mouthed; children, ducks, cocks, and hens fled from the village
gutters; peasants, at their cottage doors, held up their hands, with
shouts of fear, while broad fields and lines of leafless trees, turf
dykes, and hedges, drains, and thatched dwellings seemed all to fly past
with railway speed, or to be revolving in a circle round us.
A shriek of commiseration burst from my affrighted companion, when, just
as we swept past the base of Drumcarra Craig, in the cold, bleak, and
elevated district of Cameron, poor Willie Pitblado, who had risen to
give me the assistance of his hands in bearing on the reins, or for the
last time to try and let down the faulty drag, fell out behind, and
vanished in a moment. And now before us spread Magus Muir, where the
graves of Archbishop Sharpe's murderers lie in a field that has never
been ploughed even unto this day.
Twilight had come on, and a brilliant aurora, forming great pillars of
variegated light, that shot upward and downward from the horizon to the
dome of heaven, filled all the northern quarter of the sky with singular
but many masses of streamers. Thus, the brilliance of the atmosphere
cast forward in strong and black outline the range of hills that bound
the Howe of Fife, and terminate the valley through which the Ceres flows
to join the Eden; and all this, I think, conduced to add to the terror
of the horses.
Pitblado's fate greatly alarmed and concerned me, for he was a brave,
handsome, and faithful fellow, and an old acquaintance; but I had
another--a nearer, dearer--and more intense source of anxiety. If she
who sat beside me, clinging to me, and embracing my left arm with all
her energy--she whom I loved so deeply, and whom I had lured into the
tandem, when she might have been safely in the drag or carriage, should
lose her life that night, of what value would my future existence be,
embittered with such a terrible reflection?
"If a linchpin comes loose, or a trace gives way," thought I, "all will
be over with us both."
"Oh, Mr. Norcliff, Mr. Norcliff!" she exclaimed, while the tears, which
she had no means of wiping away, streamed over her pale and beautiful
face, and while her head half-reclined on my shoulder. "Heaven help us,
this is terrible--most terrible! We shall certainly be killed!"
"Then I hope it shall be _together_," I exclaimed. "Lady Loftus--dear
Lady Loftus--dearest Louisa (here was a jump) trust to me, and me only!
(what stuff men will talk; who else could she trust to?) and if it is in
the power of humanity to save you, you shall be saved, or I shall die
with you. Louisa, oh, Louisa, hear me. I would not--I could not
survive you; but--but sit still, sit close, grasp me and hold on for
Heaven's sake. (D--n that leader!) Oh, Louisa, I love you, love you
dearly and devotedly. You must believe me when I say it at a time like
this; when death, perhaps, is staring us face to face. Speak to me,
dearest!"
I felt that the day, the hour, the moment of destiny had come; that time
of joy or sorrow forever, and casting all upon it, committing the reins
to my right hand, I threw my left arm round her, and pressing her to my
breast, told her again and again how fondly I loved her, while still our
mad steeds tore on.
"I know that you love me, Mr. Norcliff," she said, in a low and agitated
voice, as her constitutional self-possession returned. "I have long
seen it--felt it."
"My adorable Louisa!"
"And I will not--will not----"
She paused, painfully.
"What? Oh, speak."
"Deny that I love you in return."
"Heaven bless you, my darling, for saying so; for lifting a load of
anxiety from my heart, and for making me so happy," I whispered, making
an effectual effort to kiss her forehead.
"But then, Mr. Norcliff----"
"Alas! yes; but what?"
"There is mamma; you know, perhaps, her views concerning me--ambitious
views; but we must take another time, if Heaven spares, to talk of that
matter."
"What time so good as this?" I exclaimed impetuously, as we tore along,
and Magus Muir, the Bishop's Wood, and Gullane's gravestone were left
behind. "Poor me, a lieutenant of the lancers; and the earl, your
father."
"Oh, dear papa--good, easy man--I don't think he troubles his head much
in the affair; but if mamma knew all this, such a violation of her
standing orders, heaven help us!"
She could almost have laughed but for the peril on which we were
rushing, and a shrill little cry escaped her, as the leader suddenly
quitted the hard highway, and, followed by the wheeler, passed throughan
open field gate, and continued at the same frightful speed across a
large space of pasture land that sloped steeply down to where my
forebodings told me the Eden lay, and there, sure enough, in less than a
minute, we could see the river rolling among the copsewood, with its
waters swollen by the snows that had recently melted among the Lomond
hills.
Though a placid stream usually, and having a pretty level course, in
that quarter the banks were rugged, and the bed full of fallen larches
and large boulder stones. If the vehicle overturned, what might be the
fate of her who had just acknowledged that she loved me?
A prayer--almost a solemn invocation--rose to my lips, when, with the
rapidity of light, the thought occurred to me of heading the leader
towards a little stone bridge that spanned the stream. It was a mere
narrow footway for shepherds, sheep, and cattle, and not of sufficient
breadth to permit the passage of a four-wheeled gig; but I knew that if
the latter could be successfully jammed between the walls, the course of
the runaways would be arrested.
There was no alternative between attempting this and risking death from
drowning or mutilation in the rugged bed of the swollen stream.
Down the steep grassy slope our foam-covered cattle rushed straight for
the narrow bridge; I grasped the rail of the seat with one hand and arm;
the other was round Louisa, lest the coming shock might throw us off.
In an instant we felt it, and she clung to me, half-fainting, as there
was a terrible crash, a ripping and splitting sound, as wood was smashed
and harness rent. Our course was arrested--the wheels and axle of the
fore-carriage wedged between the stone walls of the narrow bridge, the
wheeler kicking furiously at the splinter-bar and splash-board, and the
leader, the blood mare, the source of all the mischief, hanging over the
parapet in the stream, snorting, half-swimming, and for ought I cared,
wholly hanging.
My first thought was my companion. We both trembled in every limb as I
lifted her gently to the ground, and placed the seat-cushions on a
stone, where she might sit and compose herself till I considered what we
should do next, and where we were.
She was greatly agitated, but passively permitted me to encircle her
with my arms, to assure her that she was safe, to press her hands, and
to wipe away her tears caressingly. I forgot all about poor Pitblado,
"spilt" on the road, all about my uncle's best blood mare hanging in the
traces, and all about the half-ruined gig.
In short, I felt only the most exquisite joy that I had gained, as it
were, life and Louisa together. It was that moment of intense rapture,
when, combined with the natural revulsion of feeling consequent to
escape from a deadly peril, I enjoyed that emotion which a man feels
once, and once only, in a lifetime, when the first woman he loves
confesses to a mutual regard; and, half-kneeling, I stooped over her,
kissing her again and again, assuring her--of I know not what.
From one of her fingers I transferred to mine a ring of small value--a
pearl set in blue enamel, leaving in its place a rose diamond. It was a
beautiful stone, of the purest water, which I had found when our troops
sacked the great pagoda at Rangoon, and I had it set at Calcutta by a
jeweller, who assured me that it was worth nine hundred rupees, or
ninety pounds, and I only regretted now that it was not worth ten times
as much, to be truly worthy of the slender finger on which I placed it.
She regarded me with a loving smile on her pale face, and in the quiet
depths of her soft dark eyes, as she reclined in my arms. I gazed on
her with emotions of the purest rapture. She was now humbled, gentle and
loving--this brilliant beauty, this proud earl's daughter--mine,
indeed--all that a man could dream of as perfection in a woman or as a
wife; at least, I thought so then; and I was not a little proud of the
idea of what our mess would say--the colonel, Studhome, Scriven,
Wilford, Berkeley, and the rest--of a marriage that would certainly be
creditable to the regiment, though we had titles and honourables enough
in the lancers; and already, in fancy, I saw myself "tooling" into
Maidstone barrack-square in a dashing phaeton, with a pair of
cream-coloured ponies, with Norcliff and Loftus quartered on the panels,
and silver harness, and Louisa by my side, in one of the most perfect of
morning toilettes and of marriage bonnets that London millinery could
produce.
Poor devil! with only two hundred per annum besides my pay, and the war
before me, I was thus acquiring castles in Airshire, and estates in the
Isle of Sky.
Oblivious of time, while the woods and hills of Dairsie were darkening
against the sky, while the murmuring Eden flowed past towards the Tay,
and the ever-changing spears and streamers of the northern aurora were
growing brighter and more bright, I remained by the side of Louisa,
wholly entranced, and only half-conscious that something should be done
to enable us to return home; for night was coming on--the early night of
the last days of January, when the sober sun must set at half-past
four--and I knew not how far we were from Calderwood Glen.
Suddenly a shout startled us; the hoofs of horses were heard coming
rapidly along the highway, and then three mounted men wheeled into the
field and rode straight towards us. To my great satisfaction, one
proved to be my faithful fellow, Willie Pitblado, who, not a wit the
worse for his capsize on the road, had procured horses and assistance at
the place called Drumhead, and tracked us to where we lay, wrecked by
the old bridge of the Eden.
"Poor Willie," said Louisa, "I thought you were killed."
"No, my lady," said he, touching his hat; "it's lang or the de'il dees
by the dykeside."
Of this answer she could make nothing.
The gig was now released and run back, and though scratched, splintered,
and started in many places by the shock to which it had been subjected,
it was still quite serviceable. The wheeler was traced to it again, the
leader, her ardour completely cooled now, was fished out of the stream,
and harnessed again, and in less than half an hour, so able had been the
assistance rendered us, we were bowling along the highway towards my
uncle's house.
An hour's rapid driving soon brought us in sight of the long avenue, the
lighted windows, and quaint facade of the old mansion, at the door of
which I drew up; and as I threw the whip and reins to Willie Pitblado,
and, fearless now even of Mamma Chillingham, handed my companion down,
tenderly and caressingly, I found myself an engaged man, and the
_fiance_ of one of the fairest women in Britain--the brilliant Louisa
Loftus!
*CHAPTER XII.*
It passed--and never marble looked more pale
Than Lucy, while she listened to his tale.
He marked her not; his eye was cold and clear,
Fixed on a bed of withering roses there;
He marked her not, for different thoughts possessed
His anxious mind, and laboured in his breast.
ELLIS.
Notwithstanding all that had passed, and that we had been carried so far
in the wrong direction, we were not long behind the rest of our party in
reaching Calderwood, where the history of our disaster fully eclipsed
for the evening all the exciting details of the fox-hunters, though many
gentlemen in scarlet, with spattered tops and tights, whom Sir Nigel had
brought, made the drawing-room look unusually gay.
Lady Louisa remained long in her own apartment; the time seemed an age
to me; yet I was happy--supremely happy. I had a vague idea of the new
emotions that served, perhaps, to detain her there; but an air of cold
reserve and unmistakable displeasure hovered on the forehead of her
haughty mother.
When Louisa joined us, she had perfectly recovered her usual equanimity
and presence of mind--her calm, pale, and placid aspect. She was
somewhat silent and reserved; this passed for her natural terror of the
late accident, and though we remained some distance apart, her fine dark
eyes sought mine, ever and anon, and were full of intelligent glances,
that made my heart leap with joy.
Cora, who shrewdly suspected that there had been more in the affair than
what Berkeley called "a doocid spill," regarded us with interest, and
with a tearful earnestness that surprised us, after our return, and
during the explanation which we were pleased to make. But whatever
tales my face told, Louisa's was unfathomable, so from its expression
suspicious little Cora could gather nothing; though, had she carried her
scrutiny a little further, she might have detected my famous Rangoon
diamond sparkling on the engaged finger of her friend's left hand.
Cora was on this night, to me, an enigma!
What had gone wrong with her? When she smiled, it seemed to several--to
me especially--that the kind little heart from whence these smiles were
wrung was sick. Why was this, and what or who was the source of her
taciturnity and secret sorrow?--not Berkeley, surely--they had come home
in the drag together--she could never love such an ass as Berkeley; and
if the fellow dared to trifle with her--but I thrust the thought aside,
and resolved to trust the affair to her friend and gossip, the Lady
Loftus.
A few more days glided swiftly and joyously past at Calderwood Glen; we
had no more riding and driving; but, as the weather was singularly open
and balmy for the season, we actually had more than one picnic in the
leafless woods, and I betook me to the study of botany and arboriculture
with the ladies.
I enjoyed all the delicious charm of a successful first love! The last
thought on going to repose; the first on waking in the morning; and the
source of many a soft and happy dream between.
The peculiarity, or partial disparity, of our positions in life caused
secrecy. Denied, by the presence of others, the pleasure of openly
conversing of our love, at times we had recourse to furtive glances, or
a secret and thrilling pressure of the hand or arm was all we could
achieve.
Then there were sighs the deeper for suppression,
And stolen glances sweeter for the theft;
And burning blushes, though for no transgression,
Tremblings when met, and restlessness when left.
Small and trivial though these may seem, they proved the sum of our
existence, and even of mighty interest, lighting up the eye and causing
the pulses of the heart to quicken.
We became full of petty and lover-like stratagems, and of enigmatical
phrases, all the result of the difficulties that surrounded our
intercourse when others were present--especially Lady Chillingham, who
was by nature cold, haughty, and suspicious, with, I think, a natural
born antipathy to subalterns of cavalry in particular. Cora saw through
our little artifices, and Berkeley, that Anglo-Scotch snob of the
nineteenth century, had ever his eyes remarkably wide open to all that
was going on around him, and thus the perils of discovery and instant
separation were great, while our happy love was in the flush.
This danger gave us a common sympathy, a united object, a delicious
union of thought and impulse. Nor was romance wanting to add zest to
the secrecy of our passion. Ah, were I to live a thousand years, never
should I forget the days of happiness I spent in Calderwood Glen with
Louisa Loftus.
Our interviews had all the mystery of a conspiracy, though, save Cora,
none as yet suspected our love; and there was a part of the garden,
between two old yew hedges--so old that they had seen the Calderwoods of
past ages cooing and billing, in powdered wigs and coats of mail, with
dames in Scottish farthingales and red-heeled shoes--where, at certain
hours, by a tacit understanding, we were sure of meeting; but with all
the appearance of chance, though occasionally for a time so brief, that
we could but exchange a pressure of the hand, or snatch a caress,
perhaps a kiss, and then separate in opposite directions.
Those were blessed and joyous interviews; memories to treasure and brood
over with delight when alone. In the society of our friends, my heart
throbbed wildly, when by a glance, a smile, a stolen touch of the hand,
Louisa reminded me of what none else could perceive, the secret
understanding that existed between us.
And yet all this happiness was clouded by a sense of its brevity, and by
our fears for the future; the obstacles that rank and great fortune on
her side, the lack of both on mine, raised between us; and then there
was the certain prospect of a long and dangerous--alas! it might prove,
a final separation.
"They who love," writes an anonymous author, "must ever drink deeply of
the cup of trembling; but, at times, there will arise in their hearts a
nameless terror, a sickening anxiety for the future, whose brightness
all depends upon this one cherished treasure, which often proves a
foreboding of some real anguish looming in the distant hours."
"Where is all this to end?" I asked of myself, as the conviction that
something must be done forced itself upon me, for the happy days were
passing, and my short leave of absence was drawing to a close.
One day, by the absence of some of our friends, and by the occupation of
others, we found ourselves alone, and permitted to have a longer
interview than usual, in our yew-hedge walk, and we were conversing of
the future.
"I have two hundred a year besides my pay, Louisa." (She smiled sadly
at this, and the smile went doubly to my heart.) "The money has been
lodged for my troop with Cox and Co., and my good uncle means well
concerning me; yet, I feel all these as being so small, that were I to
address the Earl of Chillingham on the subject of our engagement, it
would seem that I had little to offer, and little to urge, save that
which is, perhaps, valueless in his aristocratic eyes----"
"And that is?"
"My love for you."
"Don't think of addressing him," said she, weeping on my shoulder; "he
has already views for me in another quarter."
"Views, Louisa!"
"Yes; pardon me for paining you, dearest, by saying so; but it is
nevertheless true."
"And these views?" I asked, impetuously.
"Are an offer made for my hand by Lord Slubber de Gullion."
My heart died within me on hearing this name, which, as I once before
stated, comes as near the original as possible.
"Hence you see, dearest Newton," she resumed, in a mournful and
sweetly-modulated voice, "were you to address my father, it would only
rouse mamma, and have the effect of interrupting our correspondence for
ever."
"Good heavens! what then are we to do?'
"Wait in hope."
"How long?"
"Alas! I know not; but for the present at least our engagement, like
our meetings and our letters, if we can correspond, must be
secret--secret all. Were the earl, my father, to know that I loved you,
Newton (how sweetly those words sounded), he and mamma would urge on
Lord Slubber's suit, and, on finding that I refused, there would be no
bounds to mamma's wrath. You remember Cora's story of the 'Clenched
Hand;' you remember the 'Bride of Lammermoor,' and must see what a
determined mother and long domestic tyranny may do."
I clasped my hands, for my heart was wrung; but she regarded me kindly
and lovingly.
"On your return home, as colonel of your regiment, perhaps, we shall
then, at all hazards, bring the matter before him, and treat Slubber's
offer with contempt, as the senile folly of an old man in his dotage.
You, at least, shall propose for me in form----"
"And if Lord Chillingham refuse?"
"Though we English people can't make Scotch marriages now, I shall be
yours, dearest Newton, as I am now, only that it shall be irrevocably
and for ever."
A close and mute embrace followed, and then I left her in a paroxysm of
grief, while my head whirled with the combined effects of love and joy,
and of sorrow, not unmixed with anger.
"I wonder what the subjects are that lovers talk of in their
tete-a-tetes," says my brother of the pen and sword, W. H. Maxwell, and
the same surmise frequently occurred to myself, before I met or knew
Louisa Loftus.
We never lacked a subject now. The peculiarities of our relative
positions, our caution for the present, and our natural anxieties for
the future, afforded us full topics for conversation or surmise; but the
few remaining days of my leave "between returns" glided away at
Calderwood Glen; the time for my departure drew nigh; already had
Pitblado divided a sixpence with my lady's soubrette, and packed up all
my superfluous traps, and within six and thirty hours Berkeley and I
would have to report ourselves in uniform at head-quarters, or be
returned absent without leave.
It was in the evening, when I had gone as usual to meet Louisa at the
seat where the close-clipped yew hedges formed a pleasant screen, that,
to my surprise, and by the merest chance, I found it occupied by my
cousin Cora.
The January sunset was beautiful; the purple flush of evening covered
all the western sky, and bathed in warm tints the slopes of the Lomond
hills. The air was still, and we heard only the cawing of the venerable
rooks that perched among the woods of the old manor, or swung to and fro
on its many gilt vanes.
Cora was somewhat silent, and I, being thoroughly disappointed by
finding her there in lieu of Louisa Loftus, was somewhat taciturn, if
not almost sulky.
Somehow--but how, I know not--Cora led me to talk insensibly of our
early days, and as we did so, I could perceive that she regarded me
earnestly from time to time, after I simply remarked that ere long I
should be far, far away from her, and among other scenes. Her dovelike,
dark eye became suffused, and the tinge on her rounded cheek died away
when I laughingly referred to the days when we had been little lovers,
and when Fred Wilford and I--he was now a captain of ours--used to punch
each other's heads in pure spite and jealousy about her; but this
youthful jealousy once took a more dangerous turn.
Among the rocks in the glen an adder of vast size took up its residence,
and had bitten several persons. It had been seen by some to leap more
than seven yards high, and was a source of such terror to the whole
parish, that my uncle, and even the provost of Dunfermline, had offered
rewards for its destruction.
On this I boldly dared my boy-rival to face it; but Fred Wilford, who
was on a visit to us from Rugby, had more prudence, or less love for
little Cora, and so declined the attempt.
Flushed with boyish pride and recklessness, I climbed the steep face of
the rock, stirred up the adder with a long stick, flung it to the
ground, and killed it by repeated blows of an axe, a feat of which my
uncle never grew tired of telling, and the reptile was now in the
library, sealed up in a glass case, being deemed a family trophy, and,
as Binns said, always kept in the best of spirits.
I sat with Cora's white and slender hand in mine, gazing at her soft and
piquant features, her pouting lips and dimpled chin, and the dark hair
so smoothly braided under her little hat, and over each pretty and
delicate ear. Cora was very gentle and very charming; she had ever been
to me a kind little playmate, a loving sister, and she sighed deeply
when I spoke of my approaching departure.
"You go by sea?" she asked.
"If we go to Turkey--of course."
"Embarking at Southampton?"
"Embarking at Southampton--exactly, and sailing directly for the East, I
suppose," said I, while leisurely lighting a cigar; "I shall soon learn
all the details and probabilities at head-quarters; but the route may
not come for two months yet, as red-tape goes."
"You will think of us sometimes, Newton, in those strange and dangerous
lands? Of your poor uncle, who loves you so well, and--and of me?"
"Of course, and of Louisa Loftus. Don't you think her very handsome?"
"I think her lovely."
"My cigar annoys you?"
"Not at all, Newton."
"But it makes you turn your face away."
"You met often, I believe, before you came here?"
"Oh, very often. I used to see her at the cathedral every Sunday in
Canterbury; at the balls at Rochester and Maidstone----"
"And in London?"
"Repeatedly! I saw her at her first presentation at Court, when the
colonel presented me, on obtaining my lieutenancy, and returning from
foreign service. She created quite a sensation!"
I spoke in such glowing terms of my admiration for Louisa Loftus, that
some time elapsed before I detected the extreme pallor of Cora's cheek,
and a peculiar quivering of her under lip.
"Good heavens, my dear girl, you are ill! It is this confounded
cigar--one of a box that Willie got me in Dunfermline," I exclaimed,
throwing it away. "Your hand is trembling, too."
"Is it? Oh, no! Stay! I am only a little faint," she murmured.
"Faint! Why the deuce should you be faint, Cora?"
"This bower of yew hedges is close; the atmosphere is still, or chill,
or something," she said, in a low voice, while pressing a lovely little
hand on her bosom; "and it seems to me that I felt a pang here."
"A pang, Cora?"
"Yes, I feel it sometimes."
"You, one of the best waltzers in the county! You have no affection of
the heart, or any of that sort of thing?"