'I never forgive!' replied his lordship bitterly.
The name of Lennard was never uttered again by his parents, nor even by his brother Cosmo (then reading up at Oxford) till the hour for forgiveness was past; and even Cosmo they contrived to innoculate with their own cruel and unchristian sentiment of hostility. Lennard's portrait was removed from its place of honour in the dining-hall, and banished to the lumber-attic; the goods, chattels, and mementoes he left at home were scattered and dispersed; even his horses were sold, and the saddles he had used; and the Fettercairn family would—could they have done so—have obliterated his name from the great double-columned tome of Sir Bernard Burke.
Heedless of all that, the young husband and his dark-eyed girl-wife were all the world to each other.
'After mamma followed papa to the grave, Lennard—for she never held up her head after she heard of his death at Khooshab,' said Flora, as she nestled her head in his neck, 'I seemed to be condemned to a life of hardship, humiliation, and heartlessness, till I met you, dearest. I felt that even the love of some dumb animal—a dog or a horse—was better than the entire absence of affection in the narrow circle of my life. I did so long for something or some one to love me exclusively—I felt so miserably, so utterly alone in the world. Now I have you—you to love me. But in winning you I have robbed you of the love of all your people.'
'Talk not of it, and think not of it, dearest Flora. We are now more than ever all in all to each other.'
The money bribe, offered in such a way and for such a purpose, exasperated Lennard still more against his family, and drew many a tear of humiliation from Flora in secret.
She thought that she had wrought Lennard a great wrong by winning his love for herself, and she was now burning with impatience to turn her back on the shores of Britain and find a new home in India; and there, by staff or other employments and allowances, Lennard knew that he could gain more than the yearly sum his father so mortifyingly offered him.
Flora wept much over it all, we say, and her appetite became impaired; but she did not—like the heroine of a three-volume novel—starve herself into a fright.
But a short time before she had been a childish and simple maiden—one sorely tried, however, and crushed by evil fortune; but with Lennard Melfort now, 'the prince had come into her existence and awakened her soul, and she was a woman—innocent still—but yet a woman.'
The scenery of the Mearns looked inexpressibly lovely in the purity and richness of its verdure and varied artistic views, for the woods were profusely tinted with gold, russet brown, and red, when Lennard Melfort turned his back upon it and his native home for ever!