Gradually the unwilling, but startling, conviction forced itself upon my mind that my cousin. Cora loved me! This dear and affectionate girl, from whom I had parted with such a frigid salute as that which Sir Charles Grandison gave Miss Byron at the end of their dreary seven years' courtship, loved me; and yet, blinded by my absorbing passion for the brilliant Louisa Loftus, I had neither known, seen, or felt it.
Her frequent coldnesses to me, and her ill-concealed irritation at the cool insolence of Berkeley's languid bearing, on more than one occasion, were all explained to me now.
Dear, affectionate, and single-hearted Cora! A hundred instances of her self-denial now crowded on my memory. I remembered now, at the meet of the Fifeshire fox-hounds at Largo, that it was she who, by a little delicate tact and foresight, contrived to give me that which she knew I so greatly coveted—the drive home in the tandem with Lady Louisa.
What must that act of self-sacrifice have cost her heart, if indeed she loved me? I could not write to her on such a subject, or even approach an idea that might, after all, be based on supposition, if not on vanity. More than this—I felt that the suspicion of having excited this secret passion must preclude my writing to Louisa under cover to Cora. Common delicacy and kindness suggested that I should not, by doing so, further lacerate a good little heart that loved me well.
But the next thought was how to communicate with Louisa, Cora being our only medium. Nor could I forget that when I was up the Rangoon river, and when my dear mother died at Calderwood, that it was Cora's kiss that was last upon her cold forehead, and Cora's little hand that closed her eyes for me.
Swiftly sped the express train while these thoughts passed through my mind, and agitated me greatly. To sleep was impossible, and ere midnight I heard the bells of Berwick-upon-Tweed announce that we had left the stout old kingdom of Scotland far behind us, and were flying at the rate of fifty miles an hour by Bedford, Alnwick, and Morpeth, towards the Tyne, and the land of coal and fire.
Every instant bore me farther from Louisa; and I had but one comfort, that ere long she would be pursuing the same route—perhaps seated in the same carriage—as she sped to her home in the south of England.
I dearly loved this proud and beautiful girl; and if human language has a meaning, and if the human eye has an expression, she loved me truly in return; but though the conviction of this made my heart brim with happiness, it was a happiness not untinged with fears—fears that her love was, perhaps, the fancy of the hour, developed by propinquity and the social circle of a quiet country house; fears that my joy and success were too bright to last; and that, after a time, she might see her engagement with a nameless subaltern of cavalry in the light of a mésalliance, and be dazzled by some more brilliant offer, for the heiress and only child of the Earl of Chillingham could command many.
War and separation were before us; and if I survived to return, would she love me still, and still indeed be mine?
Her father's consent was yet to be obtained. In my impatience to know the best or the worst, I frequently resolved to break the matter by letter to his lordship; but, remembering the tears and entreaties of Louisa, I shrank from the grave responsibility of tampering with our mutual happiness.