“Surely,” he thought, “he can never be the suitor for the hand of Wilton’s daughter. If he is, he shall never have her. By heaven! so lovely a creature shall never be thrown away upon such a churl as he. A pearl for such a pig! Bah!”
He was, however, with much discomfort, forced to leave the pearl with the pig, and obliged to see that while Flora would not permit her eyes to meet his, she frequently suffered them, radiant with lustrous beauty, to settle upon Hal’s face, lingering there as though loth to leave what they loved to dwell upon. It was not an agreeable reflection, considering the new emotions awakened in his breast by the sight of her face. It may have been that dormant passion only was aroused; he chose to consider it a new sensation, and determined to satiate it at any cost or hazard. He was, however, not a man to suffer himself to appear to be disconcerted; he was cool and calculating, and was not defeated until the possibility of victory was wholly removed, then he accepted the condition with inward mortification, perhaps, and a hope to obtain the alternative of revenge, but he did not suffer to appear whatured (sp.). Rage and disappointment he felt acutely, but no one ever saw him exhibit either.
He took his leave of Flora with that gentlemanly respect that betokens good breeding—of Hal, with a formal bow, which said plainly, though not rudely: “You may be a Chevalier Bayard, disguised as a civilian, but I am not ambitious of making your acquaintance.” He shook Wilton heartily by the hand, as if he were sincere at least in that performance, and expressing his gratification at the prospect of meeting him early on the following morning, he took his departure, bearing with him his friend, who had been all eyes and ears but of no speech.
When Wilton, by gazing from the window, had satisfied himself that Colonel Mires had mingled with the throng below, he returned to the centre of the room, and, folding his daughter to his heart, he kissed her forehead, and said to her—
“My own sweet darling Flo’, cease to regard me with such anxious eyes. I am not mad!—in very truth my child, I am not. My sorrows have sorely tried me, but heaven has been withal kind, and has spared me my reason. You do not know the source of my present joy, as you know not the occasion of my fall from a position, the pleasures and luxuries of which you were too young to appreciate, and which were snatched from you ere you were old enough to regret or comprehend them.”
“And yet, dear father, whenever I see a handsome mansion, filled with splendid furniture, magnificent pictures, beautiful sculpture, standing in the midst of gay parterres, over which wave graceful trees, I seem to go back to a time when I lived in such scenes. I have fancied that I have dreamed of these lovely places in childhood; and when I have in later days come to see them, I have believed that my dreams only have recurred to me.”
“No dreams, my Flo’, but a real mansion, with its luxurious apartments, its galleries of pictures, sculptures, and articles of vertu rare and costly, its terraced gardens, its stately trees, its glassy streams and lakes, its tall fountains, and its gorgeous woodlands. No dream, my Flo’; for in such a scene you were born. In such a scene you shall reign, queen of beauty, ere you are much older. My Flo’, no dream, but reality.”
He clutched her by the wrist.
“The dream has been from the hour when that splendour, at one remorseless, dreadful swoop, was torn from my grasp up to the moment of Mires’ appearance here to-day. That fearful interval has been the dark, horrible, terrible dream; but, my Flo’, the shadows of the night are passing from us, the fragrance of the morning air is in my nostrils, the golden dawn has begun to light up our too long darkened hemisphere, and we shall yet revel in the refulgent beams of an unclouded sunshine.”
He pressed her again and again to his bosom, and kissed her with passionate fondness, while large tears rolled down his yet pallid cheeks.