CHAPTER III.—POSSESSION DISTURBED.
Duke. You are welcome: take your place.
Are you acquainted with the difference
That holds this present question in the court?
Por. I am informed thoroughly of the cause,
Which is the merchant here and which is the Jew?
—Shakspere.
In the dreams of Harry Vivian the delicate form and sweet, smiling face of Flora Wilton had appeared to him, and not unfrequently. But then she seemed ever to be some queen of faëryland, seated on a throne of gems of dazzling brilliancy, in floral realms of more exquisite beauty than mortal eye had ever beheld on earth, or waking fancy in its most gorgeous development could conceive.
In his moments of romantic imaginings, when his mind was filled with her beauty, he certainly had sketched a few scenes comprising events in which both he and Flora figured. Still his ardent imagination had not carried him beyond the presentation of a flower, and the reward for the gift with which the soft grateful look from eyes, the loveliest in the world, would enrich him.
He had never foreshadowed a time—for true love is ever subdued in action by the most genuine modesty—when he should within his arms, press to his throbbing heart the form which had in his eyes no equal, or that the face so rare in its perfection, should recline upon his shoulder, close to his lips.
Yet so it chanced to be. Circumstances he could have never shaped had come to pass, and the bliss of entwining his arms about the small, delicate waist of Flora Wilton was bestowed upon him at a moment the most unexpected, when he was unprepared to welcome it and unable to enjoy it.
Nay, rather than bliss, the emotion he experienced might be said to have been one of terror; not without its gratification, it is true, for he would not have resigned her, senseless as she was, to another for worlds. Still the deathly hue with which her features were overspread, the compressed lips, the closed eye, from which a tear had struggled, and, disengaging itself, lodged yet upon her cheek, made him fear that the frightful visitation which had so suddenly fallen upon her was a calamity greater than her gentle nature was able to sustain. He grew himself cold and faint as the supposition crossed him that, unless some sudden and energetic measures were adopted, she would pass from her swoon into the unawakening sleep of death.
Unacquainted with anything pertaining to fainting fits, and under a strong impression that swooning and giving up the ghost were synonymous, his calls for water and for aid merged from the vehement into the frantic; he unheeded the representations made by Mr. Nutty that men in possession never quit the sight of goods placed in their charge until the amount they represent is satisfied; he threatened him most fiercely for not flying to execute his commands; but, at the close of a paroxysm of rage and agitation, he found Flora yet senseless in his arms, and Mr. Nutty dancing and declaiming, vowing that he would take the “lor” of “any willin as strove to hinterrupt him in his duty.”
In the midst of this harangue by Mr. Nutty upon the majesty of his professional avocation, the door of the apartment opened, and a young girl glided in.
She had met old Wilton on the stairs, in custody of the officers, and had seen him borne away. She had loitered outside of the door of the apartment—she heard the low, sobbing wail of the afflicted girl, whose tears were wrung from her by the terrifying conviction that her destruction was involved in the loss of her father. She heard, too, the calls of Vivian, together with the angry colloquy between him and Nutty, and then she decided on offering her assistance.