Himself on a dappled gray;
And a bugelet-horn hung down by his side
As lightly they rode away."
It is hard to describe the terrible prestige which, after the event I have been speaking of, attached itself to Ralph Mohun. As for attempting a second attack on the fatal house, the peasantry would as soon have thought of storming the bottomless pit. They did not even try a shot at him from behind a wall; considering him perfectly invulnerable, they deemed it a pity to waste good powder and lead that might be usefully employed on an agent or process server. As his gaunt, erect figure went by, the men shrunk out of his path, and the women called their children in hastily, and shut their cabin doors; the very beggars, who are tolerably unscrupulous, gave his gate a wide berth, crossing themselves, with a muttered prayer, "God stand betwixt us and harm." If Ralph perceived this, I think he rather liked it; at all events, he made no attempt, either by softening his manner or by any act of benevolence, to win the popular favor.
Before going to the Lodge I had heard from Livingstone. He said that his cousin's affair with Charley was progressing satisfactorily (I knew what that meant), and that he was going himself to sell out. I was not surprised at this; for some time past even the light restraint of service in the Household Brigade had begun to bore him. But the intelligence conveyed in a brief note from him during my stay with Mohun startled me very much. It announced, without any preface or explanation, that he was engaged to Constance Brandon.
I had observed that lately he never mentioned or alluded to Miss Bellasys, but he had been equally silent about his present betrothed. I told my host of the news directly.
"I am very glad to hear it," he said. "I never heard any thing but good of his fiancée. She is wonderfully beautiful, too, I believe, and her blood is unexceptionable. And yet," he went on musingly, "I should hardly have fancied that she would quite suit Guy. I don't know any one who would exactly. By-the-by, was there not a strong flirtation with a Miss Bellasys?"
"Yes; so strong that I should have been less surprised to have seen her name in this letter."
"Then he has not got out of that scrape yet," Mohun observed. "That girl comes of the wrong stock to give up any thing she has fancied without a struggle. I knew her father, Dick Bellasys, well. He contrived to compress as much mischief into his five-and-thirty years, before De Launy shot him, as most strong men can manage in double the time. He was like the Visconti—never sparing man in his anger, or woman in his love."
I felt that he was right. I did not fancy the idea of Flora's state of mind when she heard that all her fascinations had failed, and that her rival had won the day.