Alma grew pale as death at the awful words and manner of her mother, for she felt that the warning came too late, as warnings generally do.
Alma had been introduced to every member of Lady Leaton’s party, and among the rest, to Captain Norham Montrose, who was at once deeply impressed by the fresh and delicate beauty of the fair young girl, and strongly attracted by the splendid prospects of the rich young heiress.
And Alma, with all her lonely heart and soul yearning and aching for companionship and sympathy, became too easily fascinated by the love-tuned voice and love-tempered gaze of the handsome young hussar.
A few weeks, therefore, irretrievably decided the destiny of Alma—she loved, and loved for ever!
To have gained the passionate love of a creature so good and beautiful, with a heart so fresh and pure, was a triumph such as had never before fallen to the lot of the fascinating young officer. And what at first had been to him a pursuit half of admiration, half speculation, became at length a mad passion, an infatuation, a delirium! He could scarcely be said to live out of Alma’s presence. The world to him soon came to be divided only into two parts—where she was, and where she was not; and time into two eras—when she was present, and when she was absent. He saw her only at church on Sundays, and the six days that intervened between were to him “spaces between stars.”
To boldly ask the hand of this heiress of her grandfather and her mother, was nothing less than madness on the part of a young officer with only his pay. And yet, instigated as much by his overweening pride as by his headlong passion, Captain Montrose wrote to Lord Elverton and to Mrs. Elverton, asking their permission to pay his addresses to Miss Elverton at Edenlawn. From Lord Elverton he received a courteous but decided refusal—from Mrs. Elverton a sharp and peremptory denial.
And after this poor Alma’s only social solace was taken away from her, and she was forbidden to go to church.
This prohibition, as might have been expected, did more harm than good; for whereas, before it was issued, the young lovers met only once a week at church in the presence of others, they now met almost every day alone in the woods behind Edenlawn. These meetings commenced not by appointment, but rather by accident. Alma, as has been already said, was in the daily habit of walking by the margin of the lake below Edenlawn, or in the woods behind the house.
Norham, missing her from her seat at church, and forbidden to call upon her at her mother’s house, and longing for her society as the dying long for life, walked to Edenlawn, and rambled through the woods, only to be near the dwelling that contained his idol. In these rambles he met Alma. But an angel might have been present at these meetings for any indiscretion on the part of the young lovers.
Norham did indeed use all the eloquence of passion to persuade Alma to fly with him to Scotland. But dreary as was the home life of the unhappy girl, she was so far firm to her filial duty as to resist all his persuasions.