Beatrice Boville and Other Stories Part 44

"Lovely--too lovely!" echoed Mr. Mills, with a profound sigh, at which the country must have felt exceedingly flattered.

"Glorious creature your new mare is, Mr. Mills," cried the Cantab; "splendid style she took the fences in yesterday."

"Wilkins may well say she is the _belle_ of the county!" continued Mr.

Mills, dreamily. "I beg your pardon, what did you say? my mother took the fences well? No, she never hunts."

"Pray tell Mrs. Mills I am very much obliged for the beautiful azalias she sent me," interposed Florence, with her sweet smile.

"I--I am sure anything we have _you_ are welcome to. I--I--allow me----"

And the poor squire, stooping for Florence's thimble, upset a tiny table, on which stood a vase with the azalias in question, on the back of a little bull of a spaniel, who yelled, and barked, and flew at the squire's legs, who, for his part, became speechless from fright, reddened all over, and at last, stammering out that he wanted to see Mr.

Aspeden, and would go to him in the grounds, rushed from the room.

We all burst out laughing at this climax of the poor little man's misery.

"I will not have you laugh at him so," said Florence, at length. "I know him to be truly good and charitable, for all his peculiarities of manner."

"It is but right Miss Aspeden should defend a _soupirant_ so charming in every way," said the captain, his moustache curling contemptuously.

"Oh! Florie's made an out-and-out conquest, and no mistake!" cried Tom Cleaveland.

Florence did not heed her cousin, but looked up in Fane's face, utterly astonished at his sarcastic tones. No man could have withstood that look of those large, beautiful eyes, and Fane bent down and asked her to sing "_Roberto, oh tu che adoro!_"

"Yes, that will just do. Robert is his name; pity he is not here to hear it. 'Robert Mills, _oh tu che adoro!_'" sang the inexorable Cantab, as he walked across the room and asked Mary to have a game of billiards.

For once I had the pleasure of forestalling him, but he, nevertheless, came and marked for us in a very amiable manner. "How well you play, Mary," said he. "Really, stunningly for a woman. Do you know Beauchamp of Kings won three whole pools the other day without losing a life!"

"Indeed!" said Mary. "What good fun it is to see Mr. Mills play; he holds his queue as if he were afraid of it."

"I say, Mary," said Cleaveland, "you don't think that Florence will marry that contemptible little wretch, do you? Hang it, I should be savage if she had not better taste. There's a cannon."

"She has better taste," replied Mary, in a low tone, as Mrs. Aspeden and Fane entered the room.

I never could like Mrs. Aspeden--peace be with her now, poor woman--but there was such a want of delicacy and tact, and such open manoeuvring in all she did, which surprised me, clever woman as she was.

No sooner had she approached the billiard-table that day, than she began:

"Florence was called away from her singing to a conference with her uncle, and--with somebody else, I fancy." (Fane darted a keen look of inquiry at her.) "Poor dear girl! being left so young an orphan, I have always felt such a great interest and affection for her, and I shall rejoice to see her happily settled as--as I trust there is a prospect of now," she continued.

Could she mean Florence Aspeden had engaged herself to Mr. Mills? A roguish smile on Mary's face rea.s.sured me, but Fane walked hastily to the window, and stood with folded arms looking out upon the sunny landscape.

Inveterate flirt that he was, his pride was hurt at the idea of a rival, and _such_ a rival, winning in a game in which _he_ deigned to have _ever_ so small a stake, _ever_ such a pa.s.sing interest!

The dinner pa.s.sed off heavily--_very_ heavily--for gay Woodlands, for the gallant captain and Florence were both of them _distraits_ and _genes_, and he hardly spoke to the poor girl. Oh, wicked Fane!

We sat but little time after the ladies had retired, and Tom and Mr.

Aspeden going after some horse or other, Fane and I ascended to the drawing-room alone. It was unoccupied, and we sat down to await them, I amusing myself with teaching Master Tommy, the young heir of Woodlands, some comic songs, wherewith to astonish his nurse pretty considerably, and Fane leaning back in an arm-chair, with Florence's dog upon his knee in _that_, for _him_, most extraordinary thing, a "brown study."

Suddenly some voices were heard in the next room.

"Florence, it is your duty, recollect."

"Aunt, I can recollect nothing, save that it would be far, far worse than death to me to marry Mr. Mills. I hold it dread sin to marry a man for whom one can have nothing but contempt. Once for all, I cannot,--I will not."

Here the voice was broken with sobs. Fane had raised his head eagerly at the commencement of the dialogue, but now, recollecting that we were listeners, rose, and closed the door. I did not say a word on the conversation we had just heard, for I felt out of patience with him for his heartless flirtation; so, taking up a book on Italy, I looked over the engravings for a little time, and then, Tommy having been conveyed to the nursery in a state of rebellion, I reminded Fane of a promise he had once made to accompany me to Rome the next winter, and asked him if he intended to fulfil it.

"Really, my dear fellow, I cannot tell what I may possibly do next winter; I hate making plans for the future. We may none of us be alive then," said he, in an unusually dull strain for him: "I half fancy I may exchange into some regiment going on foreign service. But _l'homme propose_, you know. By the by, poor Castleton" (his elder brother) "is very ill at Brussels."

"Yes. I was extremely sorry to hear it, in a letter I had from Vivian this morning," I replied. "He is at Brussels also, and mentions a _belle_ there, Lady Adeliza Fitzhowden, with whom, he says, the world is a.s.sociating _your_ name. Is it true, Fane?"

"_Les on dit font la gazette des fous!_" cried the captain, impatiently, stroking Florence's little King Charles. "I saw Lady Adeliza at Paris last January, but I would not marry her--no! not if there were no other woman upon earth! I thought, Fred, really you were too sensible to believe all the scandal raked up by that gossiping Vivian. I do hope you have not been propagating his most unfounded report?" asked my gallant friend, in quite an excited tone.

At this moment the ladies entered. Florence with her dark eyes looking very sad under their long lashes, but they soon brightened when Fane seated himself by her side, and began talking in a lower tone, and with even more _tendresse_ than ever.

I had the pleasure of quite eclipsing Tom Cleaveland, I thought, as I turned over the leaves of Mary's music, and looked unutterable things, which, however, I fear were all lost, as Mary _would_ look only at the notes of the piano, and I firmly believe never heard a word I said.

How Florence blushed as Fane whispered his soft good night; she looked so happy, poor girl, and he, heartless demon, talked of going into foreign service! By the by, what put that into his head, I wonder?

The night of our grand theatricals at length arrived, and we were all a.s.sembled in the library, converted for the time into a green-room.

Mounteagle was repeating to himself, for the hundredth time, his part of _Lord Tinsel_; I, in my _Modus_ dress, which I had a disagreeable idea was not becoming, was endeavoring to make an impression on the not-to-be impressed Mary, and Florence was looking lovelier than ever in her rich old-fashioned dress, when Fane entered, and bending, offered her a bouquet of rare flowers. She blushed deeply as she took it. Oh!

Fane, Fane, what will you have to answer for?

We were waiting the summons for the first scene, when, to Mary's horror, I suddenly exclaimed that I could not play!

"Good Heavens! why not?" was the general inquiry.

"Why!" I said. "I never thought of it until now, but certainly _Modus_ ought to appear without moustaches, and, hang it, I cannot cut mine off."

"Take my life, but spare my moustaches!" cried Mary, in tragic tones.

"Certainly though, Mr. Wilmot, you are right; _Modus_ ought not to be seen with the characteristic 'musk-toshes,' as nurse calls them; of an English officer. What is to be done?"

"Please, sir, will you come? Major Vaughan says the group is agoing to be set for the first scene, and you are wanted, sir," was a flunkey's admonition to Fane, who went off accordingly, after advising me to add a dishevelled beard to my tenderly cared-for moustaches, which would seem as if _Modus_ had entirely neglected his toilette.

There was a general rush for part books, a general cry for things that were not forthcoming, and a general despair on the parts of the youngest amateurs at forgetting their cues just when they were most wanted.

Fane, when he came off the stage after the first scene, leant against a pillar to watch the pretty one between _Julia_ and _Helen_, so near that he must have been seen by the audience, and presented a most handsome and interesting spectacle, I dare say, for young ladies to gaze at.

Fixing his eyes on Florence, whose rendering of the part was really perfect as she uttered these words, "Helen, I'm constancy!" he unconsciously muttered aloud, "I believe it!"

"So do I!" I could not help saying, "and therefore more shame to whoever wins such a heart to throw it away. 'Beneath her feet, a duke--a duke might lay his coronet!'" I quoted.

"Are you in love yourself, Fred?" laughed the captain; then, stroking his moustaches thoughtfully for some minutes, he said at last, as if with an effort, "You are right, young one, and yet----"

If I was right, what need was there for him to throw such pa.s.sion into his part--what need was there for him to say with such _empress.e.m.e.nt_ those words:

A willing pupil kneels to thee, And lays his t.i.tle and his fortune at thy feet?

If he intended to go into foreign service, why did he not go at once?

Though I confess it seemed strange to me why Fane--the courted, the flattered, the admired Fane--should wish to leave England.

Reader, mind, the gallant captain is a desperate flirt, and I do not believe he will go into foreign service any more than I shall, but I _am_ afraid he will win that poor girl's heart with far less thought than you buy your last "little darling French bonnet," and when he is tired of it will throw it away with quite as little heed. But I was not so much interested in his flirtation as to forget my own, still I was obliged to confess that Mary Aspeden did not pay me as much attention as I should have wished.