"I really do not care whether he is rich or poor," answered Charles. "I am as rich as--or indeed richer than--he is; for, thanks to my father's generosity, I have as much as I want; and I am quite sure my uncle Scriven could not say that."
So there he sat, discussing many things with his aunt, telling her strange stories of his adventures in foreign lands--all true, indeed, but tinged in the telling with a gleam of the marvellous, for the purpose of exciting Lady Fleetwood's astonishment. In that endeavour he was very successful, for the organ of wonder was quite sufficiently developed in her head; and the day passed over very pleasantly, till it was time for Charles to seek a lodging for the night, which he easily found at the hotel opposite, where his friend Mr. Winkworth had already taken up his quarters.
Before he bade his aunt farewell, however, he gave directions to her footman, if Mr. Middleton called, to inquire particularly where he was to be found in London, and to let him know that his two friends, Mr. Winkworth and Mr. Marston, were at the hotel; and then came inquiries from Lady Fleetwood as to who this other crony of her nephew's could be.
"I will not stop to tell you all, my dear aunt," replied Charles, who by this time had his hat in his hand: "suffice it that he is the most charming man you ever saw--take care you do not find him too charming. He is quite a Don Alonzo-ish sort of man--pale, dark, wonderfully handsome, more than six feet high, with a sabre-cut across his face, sufficient to win the hearts of all the women in London. He is a colonel in the Spanish service, and has all sorts of orders and chains, though he is not above seven or eight-and-twenty. I believe his mother was a Spanish lady--I think, indeed, somebody told me so; but at all events he is quite the person to fall in love with, if you are inclined, my dear aunt."
"My dear Charles, how can you be so absurd?" exclaimed his aunt; "but now you have not told me how you met with him."
"I'll keep that for a bonne bouche," replied Charles, and walked away to his hotel.
CHAPTER IX.
It is my full and firm belief, that if, on any given day of any given year, you were, dear reader, to take the accurate history of any five square miles, not exactly a desert, upon the solid surface of the earth, and examine with a microscope the acts and deeds, the circumstances, the accidents, and the fate of the people upon it, you would find strange romances enough going on to stock a library. Look into a cottage--what will you find? Perhaps a romance of love and tenderness struggling with sorrows, difficulties, and penury; perhaps a broad farce of a quarrelsome wife and a drunken husband; perhaps a tragedy of sin, crime, and misery. Look into that stately mansion, the house of a great merchant--what is there? It may be the comedy of purse-proud affectation; it may be the tale of the tenderest affections and highest qualities; or it may show that agonizing struggle which the falling man makes to sustain himself upon the edge of the precipice at the foot of which he is soon to lie, dashed to pieces. A romance is but a microscopic view of some half-dozen human hearts.
The above observations may apparently be wide of the subject; but still there must be some link of association between them and what is to follow, as they naturally occurred to my mind when considering how I could best tell the events which are about to be related. Perhaps it was that I thought it somewhat strange that, at the very moment when the conversation took place which has been detailed in the last chapter, one of the personages therein mentioned was up to the neck, if I may so express it, in an adventure which, though trifling in itself, was destined, like many another trifle, to work a great effect on the destinies of many.
It was a beautiful evening, then, about the twenty-seventh of May. The spring had been somewhat rainy and boisterous, and the few preceding days, though clear, had been cold, especially towards the afternoon; but it would seem that Winter had puffed forth his last blast, for the summer had got full possession of the day, and held it to the end. The birds, which had been nearly silent on the twenty-sixth, were now in full song; the wild-flowers starred the wood-walks and the banks; and if a cloud came over the blue sky, it was as soft and fleecy as a lamb's first coat. Under this summer heaven there was a very beautiful lane--an English country road--running between two banks, on the top of each of which, keeping parallel with the road, was a paling, above which again spread the arms of tall trees, holding their broad leafy fans over the head of the traveller below. By the distance of the bolls of the old elms and beeches from the fence which guarded them, it appeared as if there was a good broad walk within the boundary; and when the banks, at the end of a quarter of a mile, slanted down so as to bring the paling nearly on a level with the lane, that walk might be seen, together with a view over the well-rolled gravel, to a green and shady park dotted with fallow deer. Coming down the lane was a carrier's cart with the drag on, for there was a somewhat steep descent, and the road was as smooth as a ball-room floor; and at the bottom of the hill where the carrier stopped to remove the shoe was a gentleman, who also paused, and asked him some questions.