As for Quentin, he slept but little that night; yet it was not his wetting in the river that kept him awake. He felt himself a new being—he trod on air! He rehearsed to himself again and again the adventure of the flooded stream, and went to sleep at last, with the memory of Flora's kisses on his lips, and murmuring the conviction which brought such delight to his young heart—
"She loves me! Dear, dear Flora loves me!"
CHAPTER XII.
A LAST KISS.
"Yes; open your heart! be glad,
Glad as the linnet on the tree:
Laugh, laugh away—and merrily
Drive away every dream that's sad.
Who sadness takes for joy is mad—
And mournful thought
Will come unsought."
After the climax recorded in our last chapter, events succeeded each other with great rapidity at the castle of Rohallion.
At that period of our story, Flora Warrender had attained her full stature—the middle height. In form, she was round, firm, and well developed—plump, to speak plainly—yet she was both symmetrical and graceful. Her eyes, we have said, were a kind of violet grey, clear, dark and exquisitely soft. Long lashes, and the remarkable form of her white lids, doubtless gave them this expression. Her forehead was low and broad, rather than high; her smile won all, and there was a charming air of delicacy and refinement in her manner, over all her person, and in all she said or did. The form of her hand and foot alone sufficed to indicate her station, family and nurture.
"There is a mysterious character, heightened, indeed, by fancy and passion, but not without foundation in reality and observation, which lovers have ever imputed to the object of their affections," says Charles Lamb; and viewed through this most favourable medium, to the mind of Quentin Kennedy, young and ardent as he was, Flora Warrender, in all the bloom of her beauty and girlhood, seemed indeed something "exceeding nature."
Thus it was with a heart filled with painful anticipations of coming trouble, that he heard Lord Rohallion, one morning at breakfast, when Jack Andrews emptied the contents of the letter-bag before him, exclaim,—
"A letter from Cosmo! It is for you, Winny—the careless young dog, he has not written here for six months—not even to thank me for paying that precious gambling debt of his, lost among those popinjays of the 10th Hussars. Then there was that devilish scrape with the French dancer, whom he took down to Brighton with Uxbridge's son, Paget of the 7th, and that set——"