Aurora coloured, and her sweet face became clouded by my brusque manner.
But her remark set me thinking seriously. I had undergone some quiet quizzing from Madame Blythe, who believed in her heart that we were made for each other, and that no two young people could play a game of picquet, ombre, or chess, or dance a minuet together, without falling straightway in love; so this and my Lady Ancrum's gossip set me, I say, to think angrily, and when in such a mood, Sir Basil's insulting last will and testament, like the handwriting on the wall at Belshazzar's feast, always seemed to flame before me.
I was conscious too that my cousinship and constant appearance in public with Miss Gauntlet had scared away a score of danglers and admirers, who being most of them mere macaronies, or "pretty fellows," were weak enough to leave me entire possession of the field. One or two, indeed, threatened to invite me to breathe the morning air at the back of Montague House, but somehow never put their war-like threat into execution.
I loved Aurora dearly; but the regard I bore her was quite unlike the wild and romantic passion with which the artful Jacqueline had so suddenly inspired me, for it was based upon friendship and a knowledge of each other—upon strong confidence and thorough esteem. Could more than these four ingredients be wanted to make any marriage happy?
It was not a passion likely to expend itself, and leave rosy little Cupid's wings, bows, arrows and all, insolvent at the end of the first year; yet withal, pride and a sense of injury rankled deeply in my heart.
I had never told Aurora that I loved her, but she knew it well, and that she loved me I was vain enough to believe; still the idea stung me to the soul that gossips might say that I, the disinherited and penniless cousin married the rich one to regain my lost patrimony.
"I shall not endure it," thought I, "and so shall pack my traps and be off to the regiment!"
One evening I was seated alone by the library fire in Piccadilly, full of loving, of angry, and of doubtful thoughts which tormented me, when Aurora entered gently, and leaning over the back of my chair placed her pretty hands over my forehead and eyes in sport.
"How you stare into the fire, Basil! You will quite spoil your eyes. What do you see there?"
"I am reflecting—thinking——"