“What, Dora, you not dressed! and Lady Fitzurse has been announced as waiting for us.”
“Never mind Dora, my love,” said Mr. Barham; “she is not going out to-night; she is over-tired, and had much better stay at home. I shall remain with her. How well you look, Isabel.”
So Miss Barham was forced to depart alone, and with rather a rebellious heart, at leaving Dora and Mr. Huyton in such strange proximity. There is sometimes an intuitive perception of what is about to happen, which, against our will, seizes on the heart and forewarns us of evil or disappointment. Isabel, in spite of every wish to the contrary, felt at that moment that Charles Huyton was lost to her: and Dora, with a tumult of emotion she could not attempt to understand, perceived that his intentions were more serious than she had supposed.
Anger against Maurice for being more conscientious than herself; regret for her own share in the past; gratified female vanity; a desire of retaliation, disguised under a pretense of repentance, all urged her on at this moment; and she allowed the advances of her new lover with a graceful and encouraging simplicity, which at once surprised him, and pleased her father.
“Mr. Barham,” said the visitor, after awhile, “I am going into the library to look for that book you promised me; I know exactly where to find it, I believe.”
He went, and the father taking immediate advantage of his absence, with no small degree of gratified pride and ambition, which he mistook entirely for parental affection, proceeded forthwith
to detail to his daughter the pleasing intelligence that Mr. Huyton had that very evening made proposals for her hand; that nothing could be more agreeable than such an alliance; it was a noble offer, and made in a noble spirit; the settlements would be every thing that could be desired; and as to the gentleman himself, there could not be two opinions as to his character, or two sentiments as to his good qualities.
Dora listened in profound silence, with rosy cheeks and downcast eyes, and fingers nervously playing with the tassel of the sofa cushion; but, in spite of her external quietness, there was the fiercest war in her heart. Love, anger, remorse, ambition, fear, doubt, vanity, all struggled there. To refuse at once, and without a reason, a suitor whom but just now she had visibly encouraged, was, she fancied, impossible; to assign the real cause of the reluctance, she could not but feel was more so still; better, she thought, it would be to temporize, to adopt half measures, to conceal what she dared not own, to brave what she could hardly endure to contemplate; to secure peace and tranquillity for the present at least, come what would of the future. To say yes, now, was not to bind herself irrevocably; to accept Mr. Huyton as a suitor, by no means made it inevitable that she should become his wife; circumstances might occur, unforeseen, incalculable, to release her from an engagement; and meantime, perhaps Maurice would regret his conduct, would wish he had not refused the promise she had offered to make, would—she hardly knew what she wished or expected, except the single desire to alarm him and arouse his jealousy, by making him fear to lose her.
With these ideas floating in her mind, she at length brought herself to the point of speaking, and when her father closed his harangue, she looked up and said:
“Please, papa, tell Mr. Huyton I am much honored and happy, and—and all that sort of thing.”