[CHAPTER II.]
THE DAWN OF LOVE.
Major Strickland did not forget his promise to Janet. On the eighth morning after his return from London he walked over from Tydsbury to Dupley Walls, saw Lady Pollexfen, and obtained leave of absence for Miss Holme for the day. Then he paid a flying visit to Sister Agnes, for whom he had a great reverence and admiration, and ended by carrying off Janet in triumph.
The park of Dupley Walls extends almost to the suburbs of Tydsbury, a town of eight thousand inhabitants, but of such small commercial importance that the nearest railway station is three miles away across country, and nearly five miles from Dupley Walls.
Major Strickland no longer resided at Rose Cottage, but at a pretty little villa just outside Tydsbury. Some small accession of fortune had come to him by the death of a relative; and an addition to his family in the person of Aunt Felicité, a lady old and nearly blind, the widow of a kinsman of the major. Besides its tiny lawn and flower-beds in front, the Lindens had a long stretch of garden ground behind, otherwise the major would scarcely have been happy in his new home. He was secretary to the Tydsbury Horticultural Society, and his fame as a grower of prize roses and prize geraniums was in these latter days far sweeter to him than any fame that had ever accrued to him as a soldier.
Janet found Aunt Felicité a most quaint and charming old lady, as cheerful and full of vivacity as many a girl of seventeen. She kissed Janet on both cheeks when the major introduced her; asked whether she was fiancée; complimented her on her French; declaimed a passage from Racine; put her poodle through a variety of amusing tricks; and pressed Janet to assist at her luncheon of cream cheese, French roll, strawberries, and white wine.
A slight sense of disappointment swept across Janet's mind, like the shadow of a cloud across a sunny field. She had been two hours at the Lindens without having seen Captain George. In vain she told herself that she had come to spend the day with Major Strickland, and to be introduced to Aunt Felicité, and that nothing more was wanting to her complete contentment. That something more was needed she knew quite well, but she would not acknowledge it even to herself. He knew of her coming, he had been with Aunt Felicité only half an hour before--so much she learned within five minutes of her arrival; yet now, at the end of two hours, he had not condescended even to come and speak to her. She roused herself from the sense of despondency that was creeping over her, and put on a gaiety that she was far from feeling. A very bitter sense of self-contempt was just then at work in her heart: she felt that never before had she despised herself so utterly. She took her hat in her hand, and put her arm within the major's, and walked with him round his little demesne. It was a walk that took up an hour or more, for there was much to see and learn, and Janet was bent this morning on having a long lesson in botany, and the old soldier was only too happy to have secured a listener so enthusiastic and appreciative to whom he could dilate on his favourite hobby.
But all this time Janet's eyes and ears were on the alert in a double sense of which the major knew nothing. He was busy with a description of the last spring flower-show, and how the Duke of Cheltenham's auriculas were by no means equal to those of Major Strickland, when Janet gave a little start as though a gnat had stung her, and bent to smell a sweet blush-rose, whose tints were rivalled by the sudden delicate glow that flushed her cheek.
"Yes, yes!" she said, hurriedly, as the major paused for a moment; "and so the duke's gardener was jealous because you carried away the prize?"
"I never saw a man more put out in my life," said the major. "He shook his fist at my flowers, and said before everybody, 'Let the old major only wait till autumn, and then see if my dahlias don't----.' But yonder comes Geordie. Bless my heart! what has he been doing at Tydsbury all this time?"