Flora, too, passed a part of the night in tears and prayer—tears for the loss of the gentle being she had loved so affectionately, and prayer for an angel-life with her hereafter in the ever-sunny regions of Paradise. Somehow, the form of Hal Vivian was interwoven with her thoughts and her prayers. She wept as her vision brought him to her eyes—she knew not wherefore; and her cheek hushed and burned as in fancy she saw his quiet, earnest gaze bent upon her face.
The sun was penetrating brightly through the window of her sleeping chamber as she awoke. She pressed her beautiful eyes with the delicate tips of her soft fingers, and then, opening them, gazed around her, surprised and somewhat disappointed to find that she was no longer dreaming. As, with the assistance, of her maid, she attired herself, she gazed out of the window upon the lovely landscape spread before her Upland and woodland, valley and ridge, all clothed in luxuriant verdure, fair as eye ever rested upon, and her dreams were called up by the beautiful scene before her.
A rosy blush mantled on her cheek as she remembered that Hal took part in her dreams, and probably she thought that, as with joy she had wandered with him in flowery meads and shadowy groves in her dream, the reality, if it were to occur here, would not be altogether distasteful to her.
Again her cheek burned, and her gentle bosom heaved, as, in her mental dreams, she saw his full clear eye turned upon her with thoughtful fervour. Strange that she should not ask herself what this emotion meant.
For the first few days she wandered with her father or alone over the more attractive portions of the property. Memory was busy all the while, and she sought to retrace spots and places she had in laughing childhood gambolled over. At the expiration of a week, Colonel Mires made his appearance.
There was a change in the aspect of his features, his skin was of a white sallowness; his eye was brighter, and the edges of the eyelids were red, as if inflamed. His black hair seemed longer and to be straggling, as if the care originally displayed in its arrangement had been abandoned. His voice, too, was hoarser in its tone, and his manner appeared agitated and abrupt.
Wilton did not notice the alteration in him, but Flora observed it, and attributed it to some event that had happened, and had brought him sorrow; so she was more kind in her manner to him, and seemed to evince more interest in his conversation than she had ever before exhibited.
There was no disguise in the joy which he displayed at this, but she saw in it nothing more than gratefulness for her endeavour to wile away moments he would otherwise have spent in sad thoughts. His flushed cheek and his increased excitement were not interpreted as he could have wished—for that he entertained for her the passion of love, was exactly the last thing she would have conceived respecting him.
He sought, by all the experience he was master of, to increase and improve the opportunity afforded him in having the field to himself, of ingratiating himself in her good graces, and of winning her favour. But anxious as he was upon the point, he was afraid to declare himself, for fear of startling her timid nature—all unpractised in the world’s ways—and thus damage the cause he had at heart. A cause which he trusted to conduct to success by obtaining an influence over her, the insidious approaches of which should be so cautiously concealed, that she would be unable to detect them until she discovered herself in trammels from which she would be unable to get free.
It is easy to lay plans for the capture of a woman’s heart. Artless, innocent, gentle, yielding, she may be; but even when those plans, matured by all that practised skill and experience can suggest, are put in operation, it is often found, at the moment of anticipated triumph, that the surrender of the heart depends solely on some condition which was omitted in the calculations upon which the plans were constructed.