“You were always an enthusiast,” answered the baronet, kindly, “and enthusiasts in every cause are juggled out of their reward. Take a leaf from the book of your employers, and remember their own watchword: ‘Box it about, it will come to my father.’ Do you let them box it about, till it has nearly reached the—the—well—the claimant of the British crown, and when he has opened his hands to seize the prize, you give it the last push that sends it into his grasp—the Pope could not offer you better counsel. If you have drunk enough claret, let us go to our coffee in Lady Hamilton’s boudoir.”
But Florian excused himself on the plea of fatigue and business. He had letters to write, he said, which was perfectly true, though they might well have been postponed for a day, or even a week—but he wanted an hour’s solitude to survey his position, to look steadily on the future, and determine how far he should persevere in the course on which he had embarked. Neither had he courage to face Cerise again so soon. He felt anxious, agitated, unnerved, by her very presence, and the sound of her voice. To-morrow he would feel more like himself. To-morrow he could learn to look upon her as she must always be to him in future, the wife of his friend. Of course, he argued, this task would become easier day by day; and so, to begin it, he leaned out of window, watching the stars come one by one into view, breathing the perfume from the late autumn flowers in her garden, and thinking that, while to him she was more beautiful than the star, more loveable than the flower, he might as well hope to reach the one as to pluck her like the other, and wear her for himself.
Still, he resolved that his affection, mad, hopeless as it was, should never exceed the limits he had marked out. He would watch over her steps and secure her happiness; he would make her husband great and noble for her sake; everything belonging to her should be for him a sacred and inviolable trust. He would admire her as an angel, and adore her as a saint! It was good, he thought, for both of them, that he was a priest!
Enthusiasm in all but the cause of Heaven is, indeed, usually juggled out of its reward, and Sir George had read Florian’s character aright when he called him an enthusiast.
CHAPTER XLV
THE LITTLE RIFT
From Lady Hamilton to Madame la Marquise de Montmirail.
“My very dear Mamma,—
“You shall not again have cause to complain of my negligence in writing, nor to accuse me of forgetting my own dear mother, amongst all the new employments and dissipations of my English home.
“You figure to yourself that both are extremely engrossing, and so numerous that I have not many moments to spare, even for the most sacred of duties. Of employments, yes, these are indeed plentiful, and recur day by day. Would you like to know what they are? At seven every morning my coffee is brought by an English maid, who stares at me open-mouthed while I drink it, and wonders I do not prefer to breakfast like herself, directly I am up, on salt beef and small beer. She has not learned any of my dresses by name; and when she fastens my hair, her hands tremble so, that it all comes tumbling about my shoulders long before I can get downstairs. She is stupid, awkward, slow, but gentle, willing, and rather pretty. Somehow I cannot help loving her, though I wish with all my heart she was a better maid.