He was invited to stay to dinner; the invitation was repeated for a second occasion and a third. Lord Oakhampton had evidently few friends in that part of the world, was the modest thought of Derval, and the Bermuda Isles formed a safe and easy topic for general conversation when other subjects failed; and the usually haughty peer thawed fast and easily towards his young friend—little dreaming that the latter was learning faster to love his daughter, and not the less that he deemed this love a midsummer madness, and too surely might be only like the desire of the moth for the star!
They met on the marine parade, on the shingly beach, and singularly enough in some of the shady green lanes, that had escaped recent improvements; but Miss Sampler was always with her, a companion now. Derval felt his heart leap when he saw her, and it trembled as she drew near him, and as it had never trembled under human influence before. He showed her the locket she had given him at Bermuda. She laughed at first, and then coloured deeply to find that he wore it attached to his neck by a ribbon.
Yet after this she neither avoided him, nor made any change in her demeanour towards him. What could he deduce from that, but that she favoured him, or received him as a means of passing the time in a stupid watering-place. It was bitter for him to think that she—secure in a position so far above him in many respects—might be doing thus; but from the soft, shy gentleness of her manner, it was impossible to adopt such a conviction.
Twice, when escorting her to the dinner-table, he thought that her hand—how little it was!—leant rather fondly on his arm, and the idea made his heart thrill. Is it a marvel that his head was turned and intoxicated by the opportunities offered by propinquity, and that the secret of his heart was daily trembling on his lips?
Was she luring him on to his own destruction? Her calm, gentle eye, and perfect quietude of manner, repelled this idea. Could he but have looked into the girl's heart! At that very time she was asking herself, what was this young sailor to her? Why should she feel so deeply interested in him, for such was indeed the case! Cold reason replied that he ought to be as nothing to her; yet her heart already told her that he was something, and more than something to dream of—to ponder on fondly—to be sorely missed when he departed—as if his life were already mysteriously linked with her own.
"His life linked with hers? What folly!" she whispered to herself, as she thought of her proud father and "society."
So now they had taken them to boating on the bay; but Miss Sampler who usually played propriety in their apparently casual walks, disliked aquatic excursions, and generally sat reading on the beach, while Derval pulled far enough out to be beyond the ken of anything but a powerful lorgnette, and of this Clara generally possessed herself "to see the coast."
On the evening mentioned, when Clara referred to the tatooing, and made Derval promise to disfigure his arms no more in that remarkable way, it may be inferred that their intimacy had made considerable progress—the result of the somewhat untrammelled life they led at Finglecombe—and seldom does the evening sun fall upon a pair of more attractive-looking lovers—for lovers they were undoubtedly—though no distinct word of love had passed between them.
It lingered, softly as Derval's own eyes, on Clara's graceful figure, her creamy dress and soft laces, on her shining hair, and pretty little feet encased in hose of bright cardinal silk and tiny bottines, the most perfect that Paris could produce—bottines which the folds of her dress had kindly revealed for a time.
Seeing that Derval was resting, as we left him—resting dreamily on his sculls, and letting the boat drift with the current, while his soul was full of her beauty, and his heart seemed at his lips, she said: