‘Psha! A general’s daughter, a mere child too! What absurdity to talk like that! No; I prefer to keep to my own station.’
Mrs. Larkins said nothing, but silence is sometimes more eloquent than words; and Mimie Larkins, who was present, looked up with a quick blush, which any man whose heart was touched would have interpreted his own way. The fiction of the relationship between these two had long since melted away. Good Mrs. Larkins, who had hated herself for keeping a secret from her husband, had told him the whole story very soon after Herbert had learnt the truth. Mimie, too, soon knew that the handsome sergeant who had kissed her and called her sister was really only a cousin, and as things went a very eligible parti.
Perhaps Mrs. Larkins, womanlike, was a matchmaker too. Why should she not encourage it? Herbert and her Mimie were cut out for each other; and if in the long run he should come into his own, why should not her daughter share his good fortune? Herbert was himself on the point of accepting the situation and succumbing to his fate. Mimie was attractive in no ordinary degree. She was a bright-eyed, sweet-voiced girl, with a gentle confiding manner, and very light-hearted ways. But then Herbert thought of his great aims, of the object of his life. To marry at all, at his age, would be to tie a millstone around his neck, a folly from which he would never recover.
When a man thinks thus, there is but little fear of his falling desperately in love. Then came the vision of the little lady, at present so far above him in station, and he found himself drawing comparisons in which poor Mimie Larkins came off second-best.
For a time she resented it very bitterly. Mimie’s was a simple impulsive nature; she was of a yielding malleable disposition, readily amenable to better influences, but she was also, like every daughter of Eve, fond of admiration and grieved when it was denied. Her heart was ready to go out to Herbert the moment she knew he was not her brother, and as time passed and he made no sign, she grew more and more discontented and cross. Now, his loud praises of this Miss Prioleau made her angrier than ever. Little minx, why did she come poaching upon other people’s preserves? Oh, for a chance of showing Herbert that others were not so blind as he!
The chance came—all too soon. It was at a sergeants’ ball that Ernest Farrington first crossed her path, and threw himself at once, metaphorically, at her feet. His attentions were perfectly respectful, but very marked, and Mimie was more than flattered by them. Here indeed was a chance of spiting Herbert! and she availed herself of it to the full, forgetting, in the pleasure it gave her, the terrible risk she ran. Her clandestine relations with young Farrington, who was not slow to follow up his advantage, had already become far too intimate to promise well for her peace of mind, when Herbert discovered all.
He taxed her with meeting Mr. Farrington alone upon the Alameda.
She tossed her head, first disdaining to reply, then saucily asking what business it was of his.