He laughed good-humouredly, and stroked the hands clasped on his wrist.
“It would have been the very thing, Cerise!” said he. “I think I see you assisting at a cock-fight, placing the fowls, picking them up, and counting them out! I think I can see Sir Marmaduke’s face when you walked into the pit. I think I can hear the charitable remarks of all our county ladies, who are not disposed to let you off more easily, my dear, because you are so much better-looking and better dressed than anything they ever saw north of the Trent. Yes, my darling, come to the next cock-fight by all means. Il ne manquerait que ça!”
The little French sentence was music to her ears. It was the language in which he had wooed her; and though she spoke his language now assiduously, and spoke it well, the other was her mother-tongue. She laughed, too.
“Perhaps I shall take you at your word,” said she, “though it is a cruel, horrid, wicked amusement. Did you win, George?”
“Fifty gold pieces!” was his answer; “and the same on a return match next week, which I am equally sure of. They will get you two new dresses from Paris.”
“I want no dresses from Paris,” said she, drawing him towards the bowling-green. “I want you to help me in my garden. Come and look at my Provence roses.”
But Sir George had no time to spare even for so tempting a pursuit. A fresh horse was even now waiting to carry him ten miles off to a training of the militia, in which constitutional force, as became his station, he took a proper interest. He was the country gentleman now from head to heel, and frequented all gatherings and demonstrations in which country gentlemen take delight. Of these, a cock-fight was not the most refined, but it was the fashion of his time and class, so we must not judge him more severely than did Cerise, who, truth to tell, thought he could not possibly do wrong, and would have given him absolution for a worse crime, in consideration of his accompanying her to the garden to look at her Provence roses.
“To-morrow,” said he; husbandlike, missing the chance of a compliment about the roses, which a lover would not have let slip; the latter, indeed, if obliged to depart, would probably have ridden away with one of the flowers in his bosom. “To-morrow, Cerise. I have a press of business to-day, but will get back in time for dinner.” And touching her forehead lightly with his lips, Sir George was gone before she could stop him, and in another minute his horse’s hoofs were clattering out of the stable-yard.
From the terrace where she stood, Cerise watched his receding figure as he galloped merrily down the park, knee-deep in fern, threading the old oaks, and sending the deer scampering on all sides across the open; watched him with a cloud upon her young face, and a quiver about her mouth, that was near akin to tears; watched long after he was out of sight, and then turned wearily away with a languid step and a deep-drawn sigh.
She was but going through the ordeal that sooner or later must be endured by every young wife who dearly loves her husband. She was but learning the unavoidable lesson that marriage is not courtship, that reality is not illusion, that the consistent tenderness of a husband, if more practical, is less flattering than the romantic adoration of a lover. She was beginning to shape into suspicion certain vague misgivings which had lately haunted her, that although George was all the world to her, she was only part of the world to George! It is from the sweetest dreams that we are most unwilling to awake, and therefore it is no wonder that Lady Hamilton’s preoccupation prevented her observing a strange horseman riding up the avenue, slowly and laboriously, as though after a long journey, of which the final destination seemed to be Hamilton Hill.