"How often do you mean to dance with Captain Arundel, Miss Marchmont?" she said.
But before Mary could answer, her stepmother had moved away upon the arm of a portly country squire, and the girl was left in sorrowful wonderment as to the reason of Mrs. Marchmont's angry tone.
Edward and Mary were standing in one of the deep embayed windows of the banqueting–hall, when the dancers began to disperse, long after supper. The girl had been very happy that evening, in spite of her stepmother's bitter words and disdainful glances. For almost the first time in her life, the young mistress of Marchmont Towers had felt the contagious influence of other people's happiness. The brilliantly–lighted ballroom, the fluttering dresses of the dancers, the joyous music, the low sound of suppressed laughter, the bright faces which smiled at each other upon every side, were as new as any thing in fairyland to this girl, whose narrow life had been overshadowed by the gloomy figure of her stepmother, for ever interposed between her and the outer world. The young spirit arose and shook off its fetters, fresh and radiant as the butterfly that escapes from its chrysalis. The new light of happiness illumined the orphan's delicate face, until Edward Arundel began to wonder at her loveliness, as he had wondered once before that night at the fiery splendour of his cousin Olivia.
"I had no idea that Olivia was so handsome, or you so pretty, my darling," he said, as he stood with Mary in the embrasure of the window. "You look like Titania, the queen of the fairies, Polly, with your cloudy draperies and crown of pearls."
The window was open, and Captain Arundel looked wistfully at the broad flagged quadrangle beautified by the light of the full summer moon. He glanced back into the room; it was nearly empty now; and Mrs. Marchmont was standing near the principal doorway, bidding the last of her guests goodnight.
"Come into the quadrangle, Polly," he said, "and take a turn with me under the colonnade. It was a cloister once, I dare say, in the good old days before Harry the Eighth was king; and cowled monks have paced up and down under its shadow, muttering mechanical aves and paternosters, as the beads of their rosaries dropped slowly through their shrivelled old fingers. Come out into the quadrangle, Polly; all the people we know or care about are gone; and we'll go out and walk in the moonlight as true lovers ought."
The soldier led his young companion across the threshold of the window, and out into a cloister–like colonnade that ran along one side of the house. The shadows of the Gothic pillars were black upon the moonlit flags of the quadrangle, which was as light now as in the day; but a pleasant obscurity reigned in the sheltered colonnade.
"I think this little bit of pre–Lutheran masonry is the best of all your possessions, Polly," the young man said, laughing. "By–and–by, when I come home from India a general,––as I mean to do, Miss Marchmont, before I ask you to become Mrs. Arundel,––I shall stroll up and down here in the still summer evenings, smoking my cheroots. You will let me smoke out of doors, won't you, Polly? But suppose I should leave some of my limbs on the banks of the Sutlej, and come limping home to you with a wooden leg, would you have me then, Mary; or would you dismiss me with ignominy from your sweet presence, and shut the doors of your stony mansion upon myself and my calamities? I'm afraid, from your admiration of my gold epaulettes and silk sash, that glory in the abstract would have very little attraction for you."
Mary Marchmont looked up at her lover with widely–opened and wondering eyes, and the clasp of her hand tightened a little upon his arm.
"There is nothing that could ever happen to you that would make me love you less now," she said naïvely. "I dare say at first I liked you a little because you were handsome, and different to every one else I had ever seen. You were so very handsome, you know," she added apologetically; "but it was not because of that only that I loved you. I loved you because papa told me you were good and generous, and his true friend when he was in cruel need of a friend. Yes; you were his friend at school, when your cousin, Martin Mostyn, and the other pupils sneered at him and ridiculed him. How can I ever forget that, Edward? How can I ever love you enough to repay you for that?" In the enthusiasm of her innocent devotion, she lifted her pure young brow, and the soldier bent down and kissed that white throne of all virginal thoughts, as the lovers stood side by side; half in the moonlight, half in the shadow.