I rushed back to my dim chamber.
All this was painfully incomprehensible to me. I was totally ignorant of the character of a male flirt—I set down Mrs Rashleigh as a friend!—a dashing, impudent woman, but only a friend—thirty-two years old, as she acknowledged, and every one said she was at least thirty-five, to me at sixteen she appeared old; Clarence Fairfax was five-and-twenty.
I dare say that the intimacy of these two people would have been a mystery to you; and yet, ere this, you may have learned how mischievous is the influence which a bold, meretricious, experienced woman, whose chief study has been to please the other sex, gains by perseverance over a vain young man.
Clarence Fairfax loved me as well as he was capable of loving anything besides himself; but he was enthralled by this daring being—he was afraid of her. Ah! you may doubt; but history tells us how vain and indolent men have quailed before vicious women. She even exercised a sort of mysterious power over gentle Lady Amabel. The latter had an instinctive, feminine dread of Mrs Rashleigh’s sarcastic laugh and audacious stare.
As for Sir Adrian, she amused him. She was a dashing rider, too; she had given it up for some years, but returned to it on being tempted to try Zara, my well-trained Arab. God forgive me for my suspicions—it acquired some dangerous tricks under her tutoring; she used to boast of her talent for the manège, and scandalised the decorous Dutch ladies, who, she said, were jealous of her, by riding with the General and his staff about the square at a grand review.
Lady Amabel was beginning to penetrate the cause of my fits of dejection, when unexpected news from the military posts startled both her and myself.
The war-cry had rung from the mountains in Kafirland. Vividly do I remember the night on which this intelligence reached Cape Town. The whole of the authorities, with many members of their families, had assembled, amid a crowd of pleasure-loving people, on board a fine English frigate, to celebrate a national festival. Gay groups were scattered about the decks, awaiting the arrival of Sir Adrian and his party. I was happy that evening, and stepped on the deck, leaning on Clarence’s arm. How kind, how tender had been his manner, as he almost lifted me from the barge to the gangway of the noble ship! As people are said, in the last hours of existence, to review minutely every incident of their lives, so could I once retrace the most trifling details of this brilliant and enchanting fête. As I recall it now, I remember everything—the wreaths, the flags of all the great nations of the world; the glittering arms interspersed among the laurels, and the effect of the soft light from the battle-lanterns disposed along the poop; innumerable lamps shedding their radiance through the draperies of scarlet and amber, purple, green, and white, and blue; the crowds of laughing dancers; the imposing array of military and naval uniforms and decorations.
Ah, fatal gift of beauty!