To-day he would rather shun allusion to a subject so grave, yet so delicate. He has spent part of the preceding night at the Welsh Harp—the tavern spoken of by Wingate—and his nerves are unstrung, yet not recovered from the revelry. Instead of asking her what she means by “some other mischance,” he but remarks, with an air of careless indifference,—
“True, Olympe; unless something of that sort were to happen, there seems no help for us but to resign ourselves to patience, and live on expectations.”
“Starve on them, you mean?” This in a tone, and with a shrug, which seem to convey reproach for its weakness.
“Well, chérie;” he rejoins, “we can at least feast our eyes on the source whence our fine fortunes are to come. And a pretty sight it is, isn’t it? Un coup d’oeil charmant!”
He again turns his eyes upon Llangorren, as also she, and for some time both are silent.
Attractive at any time, the Court is unusually so on this same summer’s day. For the sun, lighting up the verdant lawn, also shines upon a large white tent there erected—a marquee—from whose ribbed roof projects a signal staff, with flag floating at its peak. They have had no direct information of what all this is for—since to Lewin Murdock and his wife the society of Herefordshire is tabooed. But they can guess from the symbols that it is to be a garden party, or something of the sort, there often given. While they are still gazing its special kind is declared, by figures appearing upon the lawn and taking stand in groups before the tent. There are ladies gaily attired—in the distance looking like bright butterflies—some dressed à la Diane, with bows in hand, and quivers slung by their sides, the feathered shafts showing over their shoulders; a proportionate number of gentlemen attendant; while liveried servants stride to and fro erecting the ringed targets.
Murdock himself cares little for such things. He has had his surfeit of fashionable life; not only sipped its sweets, but drank its dregs of bitterness. He regards Llangorren with something in his mind more substantial than its sports and pastimes.
With different thoughts looks the Parisian upon them—in her heart a chagrin only known to those whose zest for the world’s pleasure is of keenest edge, yet checked and baffled from indulgence—ambitions uncontrollable, but never to be attained. As Satan gazed back when hurled out of the Garden of Eden, so she at that scene upon the lawn of Llangorren. No jardin of Paris—not the Bois itself—ever seemed to her so attractive as those grounds, with that aristocratic gathering—a heaven none of her kind can enter, and but few of her country.
After long regarding it with envy in her eyes, and spleen in her soul—tantalised, almost to torture—she faces towards her husband, saying—
“And you’ve told me, between all that and us, there’s but one life—”