"It is arranged. I was so sure of your goodness—I knew you would not let him leave England without seeing me once more, to say farewell; so I told him to call on you this very afternoon, because I was to spend the day with you. Thus, you see, it will all happen in the most natural manner."
Mrs. Henley smiled, shook her forefinger at her young friend; so they walked on, both satisfied.
Having gained this point, it soon occurred to Mary, that Marmaduke might be asked to dine and spend the evening; but as this would expose Mrs. Henley to the chance of some one dropping in, and she was very averse to be supposed to favour these clandestine meetings, a steady refusal was given. Mary inwardly resolved that she would have a farewell meeting with her lover, and alone; but said nothing more on the subject. To have a lover about to sail for Brazil, and to part with him coldly before others, was an idea no young girl could entertain, and least of all Mary Hardcastle. She was too well read in romance to think of such a thing.
It does not occur to every girl, in our unromantic days, to have a stern guardian who dislikes her lover, and forbids him the house. Mary, therefore, might consider herself as greatly favoured by misfortune; her misery was as perfectly select as even her wish could frame, and the great, the thrilling climax—the parting—was at hand. That it should be moonlight was a matter of course—moonlight on the sea-shore.
Mary Hardcastle was just nineteen. There was something wonderfully attractive about her, though it puzzled you to say wherein lay the precise attraction. Very diminutive, and slightly humpbacked, she had somewhat the air of a sprite—so tiny, so agile, so fragile, and cunning did she appear; and this appearance was further aided by the amazing luxuriance of her golden hair, which hung in curls, drooping to her waist. The mixture of deformity and grace in her figure was almost unearthly. She had a skin of exquisite texture and whiteness, and the blood came and went in her face with the most charming mobility. All her features were alive, and all had their peculiar character. The great defects of her face were, the thinness of her lips, and the cat-like cruelty sometimes visible in her small, grey eyes. I find it impossible to convey, in words, the effect of her personal charms. The impression was so mixed up of the graceful and diabolic, of the attractive and repulsive, that I know of no better description of her than is given in Marmaduke's favourite names for her: he called her his "fascinating panther," and his "tiger-eyed sylph."
She had completely enslaved Marmaduke Ashley. With the blood of the tropics in his veins, he had much of the instinct of the savage, and as when a boy he had felt a peculiar passion for snakes and tigers, so in his manhood were there certain fibres which the implacable eyes of Mary Hardcastle made vibrate with a delight no other woman had roused. He was then only twenty-four, and in all the credulity of youth.
Everything transpired according to Mary's wish, and at nine o'clock she contrived to slip away in the evening, unnoticed, to meet her lover on the sands. True it was not moonlight. She had forgotten that the moon would not rise; but, after the first disappointment, she was consoled by the muttering of distant thunder, and the dark and stormy appearance of the night; a storm would have been a more romantic parting scene than any moonlight could afford. So when Marmaduke joined her, she was in a proper state of excitement, and felt as miserable as the most exacting school-girl could require. The sea, as it broke sullenly upon the shore, heaved not its bosom with a heavier sigh, than that with which she greeted her lover, and nestled in his arms. She wept bitterly, reproached her fate, and wished to die that moment. Marmaduke, who had never before seen such a display of her affection, was intensely gratified, and with passionate protestations of his undying love, endeavoured to console her.
But she did not want to be consoled. As she could not be happy with him, her only relief was to be miserable. Self-pity was the balm for her wounds. By making herself thoroughly wretched, she stood well in her own opinion. In fact, without her being aware of it, her love sprang not from the heart, but from the head. She was acting a part in her own drama, and naturally chose the most romantic part.
The storm threatened, but did not burst. The heavens continued dark; and the white streaks of foam cresting the dark waves were almost the only things the eye could discern. The lovers did not venture far from the house, but paced up and down, occasionally pausing in the earnestness of talk.
Their conversation need not be recorded here; the more so as it was but a repetition of one or two themes, such as the misery of their situation, the constancy of their affection, and their sanguineness of his speedy return and their happy union.