The row, slow and dreamy, up-stream to Teddington-lock, would, even had there been no unlawful and much-prized lover—of whom, explain it as you will, Honor was more than half afraid—by her side, have been simply delightful. The river was so purely clear that the water-weeds beneath its pellucid surface showed brightly, freshly green; and then the long low islets, with the graceful willow-boughs, vivid with the hues of early spring, dipping their last-opened buds into the laving stream, and the banks, verdant and fair, and cattle-sprinkled—all combined to make a Breughal-like picture of spring verdure and beauty.
Notwithstanding a certain amount of horsey conversation, flirting, covert as well as open, was the order of the afternoon. Both Mrs. Foley and her sister were adepts at that truly feminine and easily-acquired accomplishment. To look the thing they meant not, to understand or not understand the ingenious double entendre, to give the little hope that hinders from despair, and only the little hope, lest the excited lover should presume, were arts in which ces dames, the unprofessional demi-monde of gay middle life, were thoroughly skilled. It required more audacity than Honor would have previously believed that she possessed to cope with rivals such as these, but, champagne aidant, she got through the female duty well; and the dinner which succeeded the aquatic excursion owed not a little of its success to the lively spirits lending added charms to the powerful influence of beauty.
The hour of ten had struck by the town clocks, and the many wine-bottles on the table of No. 3 room were near to emptying, before it occurred to any of the party therein assembled that the night was fine and warm and starlight, and that in the gardens of the hotel a fresher, purer air could be imbibed than that which reminded them somewhat too forcibly of the good things they had been imbibing.
At a conjugal hint from the Colonel, his watchful and obedient wife suggested that the moon had risen, and was looking lovely over the river. A turn on the terrace would be delightful, she thought; and as her proposal met with no opposition, they made themselves an impromptu drawing-room under the starry canopy of heaven.
“What a lovely night! how glad I am to have seen this! The moonlight never looked to me so soft and beautiful before!”
“Never? I am glad of that,” Arthur said, his face very near to Honor’s as they leant over the stone balustrade and gazed out upon the tranquil scene. “I may hope then that, for a little while at least, the memory of this night will linger with you. It is a day that I at least shall find it very hard to forget. You smile and shake your head. Perhaps you take me for one who knows nothing of his own mind,—one whom a fresh face can stir into new and soon-to-be-changed feelings. But, Honor, listen to me—listen while we have these few moments we can call our own. I tell you that the love I feel for you is one that will defy all time and space and change. You have never been loved, my beautiful one, with such a love as this. You would tell me, were you not an angel, and too pure and good for such a world as this, that your husband—”
“Hush, hush! please don’t; I cannot bear to hear you speak of him, Mr. Vavasour,—well, well, Arthur—I know I have been very weak and wicked; but for my own folly you would never have—have told me that you loved me; and indeed I did not mean—I—”
He seized both her little hands in his strong grasp, and held them there as in a vice.
“Honor,” he whispered,—and his voice trembled with concentrated passion,—“are you going to tell me that I have been a blundering fool, and that I have mistaken every look and word and smile that led me on to love you? If so,—but no, I cannot, will not think it possible. Long ago, my darling,”—and his voice softened into entreaty,—“long ago, when first I held this precious hand in mine, you might, with cold words and scanty smiles, have taught me”—and he smiled bitterly—“my place. But that you did not do, Honor: you know you did not. What your motive was in leading me on to hope that I was something—a very little—more to you than a mere acquaintance, you best can say. If it were well meant on your part, all I can say is that it was cruel kindness; for it will be a hard fall down again to the place from which your gentle words and smiles had raised me. But once more, Honor, for the love of Heaven, tell me that you have not trifled with me. Do not make me lose my faith in every woman. Tell me before we part to-night that if we were doomed never to meet again you would sorrow a little, just a very little, for my loss. Tell me that sometimes, when you are alone, you think of me; tell me”—and he ventured unreproved to steal his arm round her waist—“tell me that you love me just a very little, Honor, in return for the heart’s whole devotion that I feel for you.”
Her bosom heaved, and her heart beat very quickly, under the strong firm pressure of his hand; but for all that—and perhaps some of my readers may understand the anomaly—the strongest feeling in Honor Beacham’s mind at that important crisis was one of relief that she was not alone with her adorer. And yet in one sense she loved him. His touch, his lingering gaze into the depths of her blue eyes, exercised—and never more so than at that moment—a strange magnetic influence over her nerves. She could ill have borne a decree that banished Arthur Vavasour from her society, and yet she felt that he was to play no actual part in the misty future of her life—the life which she never doubted she was to spend with John; the life that might be a tolerably happy one when Mrs. Beacham was gathered—not to her forefathers, but to the place allotted to her by her dead husband’s side.