“She will hear you!” whispered the lady, impatiently.
“And who is the other little elf?” cried the old squire, whose admiration was not to be subdued. “Why, dear lady, you have a new race of fairies and goddesses springing up about Greenhurst. Take heed that my friend George is not made captive.”
“I followed the old squire’s look, and saw George Irving, with another young man, fairer and taller than himself, with their eyes riveted on Cora.”
I remained with Cora all night. She was full of gleeful gossip about the wedding, and more than once spoke of the young gentleman who had looked at her so often. She did not say so admiringly, but I knew well the glow of vanity that led her thoughts that way, and the subject caused me unaccountable pain. I listened to her, therefore, with impatience, and while her beauty seemed more fascinating than ever, its brilliancy wounded me. It was a precocious and wrong feeling, I confess, but there were many passionate sensations in my heart even then, which some women live from youth to age and never know.
I was reluctant to go home—to meet Turner and Maria after the sacrifice and insult of the previous day. It seemed as if they must hate me for being the cause of it all. But deep in the morning, I put on my bonnet and prepared to return home. Cora proposed to go part way with me, and though I preferred to be alone, she persisted with laughing obstinacy, and flinging a scarf over her head, ran after me down the garden.
I was very willing to loiter on the way, and we turned into the fields enjoying the soft autumn air, and searching for hazelnuts along the stone fences.
We came to a thicket where the fruit was abundant, and so ripe that we had but to shake the golden husks, and the nuts came rattling in showers around us. I clambered up the wall, and seizing a heavy branch from the thicket, showered the nuts into the pretty silk apron which Cora held up with both white hands.
I think in my whole life I never saw anything so lovely as she was at that moment. The blue scarf floated back upon the wind, circling her head as you see the drapery around one of Guido’s angels; her eyes sparkled with merriment: and she shook back the curls from her face with a laugh, gleeful and mellow, as if she had fed on ripe peaches all her days.
“Stop, stop, you will smother me!” she shouted, gathering the apron in a heap, and holding up both hands to protect her curls from the shower of nuts that I was impetuously beating over her.
I paused, instantly, ashamed of the action, which had been unconscious as it was violent.