“That is very interesting. I understand perfectly,” said Lauriston heartily.
And after an exchange of lip-courtesies concerning their enjoyment of each other’s society, Lauriston took his leave and started on his way back to Hounslow.
One thing was quite clear to him now. Rahas, on his own showing, had seen Nouna’s mother at some time or other, or he would not have been able to call up her image in her daughter’s mind. Was there some mysterious understanding between her and Rahas, who had, however, come in Nouna’s path by the merest accident? George Lauriston’s romantic love had certainly all the stimulus of mystery, and this stimulus was rendered considerably stronger by a discovery he made, walking quickly through Hyde Park, on his way to Victoria Station. He had been followed by a woman.
Just before he reached the gates at Hyde Park Corner he glanced back along the path and noticed a figure he had seen once or twice on his way. He made one quick step back towards her; but the woman, who was not very near, disappeared at once among the trees.
“I think I’ve had about adventures enough for one evening,” said he to himself as he went through the gates instead of pursuing her. “I can find out what I must know through the lawyer to-morrow.”
But when he left the train at Hounslow Barracks, he was almost sure that, among the alighting crowd of passengers, he saw the woman again.
CHAPTER VIII.
Next day, in the cruel but wholesome light of the morning, Lauriston took a grand review of all the circumstances of his short acquaintance with Nouna, and felt a growing conviction that he had made an astonishingly complete fool of himself. He had been foolish to visit the girl a second time, when he knew the effect her picturesque beauty and wayward charm had had on a first interview. He had been worse than foolish, he had been selfish, wicked, to make that wild confession, that abrupt offer of marriage to good little Ella, when he felt himself too weak to struggle unaided with the passion that possessed him. He had crowned his folly last night, when he pledged himself to marriage with a little wild girl, of somewhat mysterious parentage, passionate, capricious, in all probability madly extravagant, whom he hardly knew, whom he scarcely trusted, and who was certainly as deficient in every quality which goes to the making of the typical wife for an English gentleman as it is possible for a girl to be. And yet, in spite of all this, Lauriston felt no faintest pang of regret; amazement, disgust with himself undoubtedly, but of repentance no trace.
For the tide of a first passionate love in a young, vigorous nature is strong enough to tear up scruples by the roots, to bear along prejudices in its waters like straws, to wash away the old landmarks in an onrush which is all fierce triumph and tempestuous joy.
To Lauriston, who had been accustomed, from a lofty standpoint of ambition and devotion to duty, to look down upon love as a gentle pastime which would amuse and occupy him when the first pangs of his hungry desire for distinction should be satisfied, the sudden revelation of some of its keen delights was an experience full of novel excitement and charm. True at least to one principle while so much was suffered to go by the board, he did not for one moment waver in his resolution to marry Nouna. No staid English girl, whose mild passions would not develop until years after she had attained a full measure of self-control and self-restraint, would ever have for him the charm and the fascination of this little barbarian. Who pleased him best, and no other he would possess.