REJECTED AND ACCEPTED.
The dinner-party at Mr. Floyd's was a very merry one; and when John Mellish and Talbot Bulstrode left the East Cliff to walk westward, at eleven o'clock at night, the Yorkshireman told his friend that he had never enjoyed himself so much in his life. This declaration must, however, be taken with some reserve; for it was one which John was in the habit of making about three times a week: but he really had been very happy in the society of the banker's family; and, what was more, he was ready to adore Aurora Floyd without any further preparation whatever.
A few bright smiles and sparkling glances, a little animated conversation about the hunting-field and the race-course, combined with half a dozen glasses of those effervescent wines which Archibald Floyd imported from the fair Moselle country, had been quite enough to turn the head of John Mellish, and to cause him to hold wildly forth in the moonlight upon the merits of the beautiful heiress.
"I verily believe I shall die a bachelor, Talbot," he said, "unless I can get that girl to marry me. I've only known her half a dozen hours, and I'm head-over-heels in love with her already. What is it that has knocked me over like this, Bulstrode? I've seen other girls with black eyes and hair, and she knows no more of horses than half the women in Yorkshire; so it isn't that. What is it, then, hey?"
He came to a full stop against a lamp-post, and stared fiercely at his friend as he asked this question.
Talbot gnashed his teeth in silence.
It was no use battling with his fate, then, he thought; the fascination of this woman had the same effect upon others as upon himself; and while he was arguing with, and protesting against, his passion, some brainless fellow, like this Mellish, would step in and win the prize.
He wished his friend good night upon the steps of the Old Ship Hotel, and walked straight to his room, where he sat with his window open to the mild November night, staring out at the moon-lit sea. He determined to propose to Aurora Floyd before twelve o'clock the next day.
Why should he hesitate?
He had asked himself that question a hundred times before, and had always been unable to answer it; and yet he had hesitated. He could not dispossess himself of a vague idea that there was some mystery in this girl's life; some secret known only to herself and her father; some one spot upon the history of the past which cast a shadow on the present. And yet, how could that be? How could that be, he asked himself, when her whole life only amounted to nineteen years, and he had heard the history of those years over and over again? How often he had artfully led Lucy to tell him the simple story of her cousin's girlhood! The governesses and masters that had come and gone at Felden Woods. The ponies and dogs, and puppies and kittens, and petted foals; the little scarlet riding-habit that had been made for the heiress, when she rode after the hounds with her cousin Andrew Floyd. The worst blots that the officer could discover in those early years were a few broken china vases, and a great deal of ink spilt over badly-written French exercises. And after being educated at home until she was nearly eighteen, Aurora had been transferred to a Parisian finishing-school; and that was all. Her life had been the every-day life of other girls of her own position, and she differed from them only in being a great deal more fascinating, and a little more wilful, than the majority.