Burgo's Romance

by T. W. Speight

"Good afternoon, Miss Leslie," he said in his blandest tones, as he smilingly raised his hat. "It seems a long time since I had the pleasure of seeing you last. As an old acquaintance, I trust it won't be deemed a liberty if I venture to congratulate you on a certain auspicious event which, I am told, may shortly be expected to take place." Then, with an almost startling change of voice and manner, he added: "For, of course, it is true that you are going to marry Lord Penwhistle."

"Yes, Mr. Brabazon, it is quite true," replied Clara in a timid little voice.

"In that case, pray accept my best wishes for your happiness," he said, as he dropped into the chair by her side. His voice had recovered its smoothness, his face was a mask. Only for a moment had he betrayed himself, and, if he could anyhow help it, it should not happen again.

"On the one side youth and beauty," he continued, "on the other a title and a rent-roll of thirty thousand a year, with Love himself, young, fresh, and pure as the dawn, to pipe before the glowing hours as they pass! It will, indeed, be an ideal union--one of those marriages (alas, that they should be so few in number!) which are said to be made in heaven itself."

"You are very cruel, Mr. Brabazon," murmured Clara, with a tear in the corner of either eye.

"Am I? I did not mean to be," he said; and some of the hardness melted out of his eyes as he looked at her.

She was not regarding him, but looking straight before her. How lovely she looked, with her delicate clear-cut profile, her fresh purity of complexion, her long brown upcurved lashes, which half veiled the violet orbs beneath them, and that half-opened rosebud of a mouth which seemed made purposely for kisses--and, perhaps, for sugar-plums! Burgo, as his eyes devoured her, was possessed by an almost irresistible longing to put his strong arms around her and strain her to his heart. How was he to know that beneath that lovely exterior there fluttered the soul of a butterfly (if butterflies possess souls), at once vain, frivolous, and shallow--incapable of constancy, or of any depth of affection, and infected by a certain mercenary quality which would grow and develop into something hateful as years went on, and had already instilled its first great lesson into her mind--that a girl's primary duty to herself; more especially if she be a girl without a "tocher," is to make a wealthy marriage?

Of all the men to whom she had been introduced since her aunt had taken her in hand and brought her out, she liked Burgo Brabazon best. His good looks were of a kind which took her fancy captive. As a rule she did not care for fair men--and yet, little Lord Penwhistle had straw-tinted hair, eyes of the colour of skim milk, and a faint, fluffy moustache, like the down on the breast of a very young chicken--while Brabazon, the first time she saw him, seemed to her her own embodiment of Byron's Corsair, a poem which she had lately read for the first Lime; or the hero of one of those very sentimental milk-and-water novels, to a perusal of which a large share of her leisure hours was devoted. But although Burgo's personality appealed so strongly to the romantic side of her character, she would never have devoted a second serious thought to him (for one can be at once romantic and mercenary-minded) had he been nothing more than (say) a banker's clerk, instead of the nephew and heir of a wealthy baronet.

Mrs. Mordaunt had made it her business to ascertain as much about Mr. Brabazon's family history as it concerned her to know, and she was quite satisfied that he would make as good a match for her niece as that charming but impecunious young woman could reasonably look for. At any rate, unless something better should presently offer itself, he must by no means be allowed to slip through Clara's fingers, for although Mr. Brabazon had not yet spoken, his infatuation was as plain as a pikestaff to that astute matron. Therefore the mot d'ordre was passed to Clara, much to her delight. She was to lead him gently on as by a silken thread, but never, if possible, to let him suspect that her fingers had fast hold of the other end of it. It ought not to be a difficult matter to bring him to book, Mrs. Mordaunt opined, "for, unless I am very much mistaken, the bandage is over his eyes already."

Nobody, therefore, could have been more astonished than Miss Leslie was that evening when, Mr. Brabazon having been brought to declare himself, her aunt (who had known quite well where to find them) bore down upon them just in time to prevent her from accepting him, and, with a request to Mr. Brabazon to rearrange the conservatory slides, carried her off from under the nose of her would-be lover.