“I mourn’d the huntress of Cromla, the sunbeam
Of beauty; who must no more on our hills appear,
But rise on the waves of the north, to light
The stranger’s hall.”
“Have you any commands to Mrs. Montgomery, my Lord?” inquired Edmund, who was writing at a small table, while most of our party were engaged at a larger one with breakfast.
“Oh yes!” said Lord Arandale. “Pray tell her that I shall send Lauson over to the Craigs: indeed that I shall go there myself, after the races.”
[233]
Julia and Frances now entered.
Shortly after, rising and going towards Edmund, he bent over the table and said, in an under tone, “I wish you would just tell my sister (it will save me a letter, and I am much hurried) that the Marquis of H? has declared his intention of making proposals for Julia, (in due time,) and that, I think she had better write to Lord L?. I wish he could be at home. Yet, the connexion is so very eligible that all unnecessary delays should be avoided. Julia’s own pretensions, in fact, rank so high, that the peerage affords few that can be termed equal matches for her. Her affections cannot be pre-engaged?” he added, in a sort of consulting whisper. “Henry behaves very foolishly; but, I should hope, there was no attachment on her side. The thing, however, must be put an end to!”
[234]
Lord Arandale returned to the breakfast table, and left our hero, as he supposed, writing. Julia was the only person who observed that he remained in the very same attitude, and without the slightest motion, till the carriages drove up. She contrived in the general move, to pass near the table at which he sat, where, pausing a moment, she said, “Are you writing to grandmamma, Edmund?”
He had been quite pale when she first approached, and evidently had not observed her. He started at the sound of her voice, and looked at her without appearing to comprehend the purport of her enquiry, but made no reply. “Are you writing to grandmamma?” she repeated, “because, I wish——” He examined his paper two or three times from top to bottom, and then replied, “I—was—”
Henry came up at the moment, and, offering[235] to Julia his arm, which she now dare not refuse, hurried her to the carriage. She perceived, with much vexation, that he wore, drawn across his breast, the scarf he had snatched from her. He continued, in defiance of a whispered remonstrance on her part, to sport it for some hours. He knew that Edmund was well aware to whom the scarf belonged. At length, Lord Arandale perceiving what was going on, insisted on the scarf being resigned. The Earl restored it himself to Julia, with a reproachful glance; to which she replied, that the scarf had been both taken and worn without her permission.
“Men seldom take liberties they do not expect will, at least, be pardoned,” replied his lordship, with some severity of countenance.
Why Henry should be thus anxious to have it supposed that he was acceptable to Julia,[236] while he took so little pains to become really so, is a mystery which time only can solve.
Our hero did not appear on the stand that day; although he was seen riding at a distance on the course. At the ordinary he went in to dinner without taking charge of any lady. At the ball, indeed, he was again to be found near Julia. After a few languid attempts at conversation, however, he seated himself beside her in perfect silence, till the Marquis of H? coming towards them with a gay and delighted air, claimed her hand for the first set. She stood up to dance, and Edmund almost immediately left the room.
When Edmund retired that night to his own apartment he took himself severely to task: he could assuredly acquit himself of deliberate efforts, intentions, or even wishes to gain Julia’s affections beyond the limit of friendship; yet[237] he had in every moment of temptation yielded to intoxicating hopes; and to attempt to distinguish between such hopes and wilful wishes he found was mere sophistry: he determined therefore to fly without again beholding Julia. As yet, her innocent heart believed all its feelings friendship. She would think him unkind, ungrateful, and forget him, without suffering any of those terrible contentions of spirit which he endured. He dare not sleep, lest he should awake under the dominion of a less virtuous impulse.
Without therefore retiring to bed, even for an hour, he commenced instantly and hastily his preparations for departure, confusedly ruminating the while:—What was he about to do? Could he leave Julia thus, to the persecutions of Henry, to the persuasions of the Marquis? and he drew his leg out of the boot[238] into which it had been half way introduced.—But he was confident, he told himself once more, for the hundredth time, that she had already rejected Henry, and that she would reject the Marquis of H?. His foot again entered the boot top, and, now, completed its descent.