Aurora Floyd (Feminist Classic). Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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herself whether she had been seen, or whether it might be possible to steal away unperceived.
But the dog set up a big bark, and settled the question.
“Quiet, Bow-wow,” she said; “quiet, quiet, boy.”
“Yes, the dog was called Bow-wow. He was twelve years old, and Aurora had so christened him in her seventh year, when he was a blundering, big-headed puppy, that sprawled upon the table during the little girl’s lessons, upset ink-bottles over her copy-books, and ate whole chapters of Pinnock’s abridged histories.
The gentlemen rose at the sound of her voice, and Miss Floyd came into the room and sat down at a little distance from the captain and her cousin, twirling a straw hat in her hand and staring at her dog, who seated himself resolutely by her chair, knocking double knocks of good temper upon the carpet with his big tail.
Though she said very little, and seated herself in a careless attitude that bespoke complete indifference to her visitors, Aurora’s beauty extinguished poor Lucy as the rising sun extinguishes the stars.
The thick plaits of her black hair made a great diadem upon her low forehead, and crowned her an Eastern empress — an empress with a doubtful nose, it is true, but an empress who reigned by right divine of her eyes and hair. For do not these wonderful black eyes, which perhaps shine upon us only once in a lifetime, in themselves constitute a royalty?
Talbot Bulstrode turned away from his ideal to look at this dark-haired goddess, with a coarse straw hat in her hand and a big mastiff’s head lying on her lap. Again he perceived that abstraction in her manner which had puzzled him upon the night of the ball. She listened to her visitors politely, and she answered them when they spoke to her, but it seemed to Talbot as if she constrained herself to attend to them by an effort.
“She wishes me away, I dare say,” he thought, “and no doubt considers me a ‘slow party’ because I don’t talk to her of horses and dogs.”
The captain resumed his conversation with Lucy. He found that she talked exactly as he had heard other young ladies talk, that she knew all they knew, and had been to the places they had visited. The ground they went over was very old indeed, but Lucy traversed it with charming propriety.
“She is a good little thing,” Talbot thought, “and would make an admirable wife for a country gentleman. I wish she would fall in love with me.”
Lucy told him of some excursion in Switzerland, where she had been during the preceding autumn with her father and mother.
“And your cousin,” he asked, “was she with you?”
“No; Aurora was at school in Paris with the Demoiselles Lespard.”
“Lespard — Lespard!” he repeated; “a Protestant pension in the Faubourg Saint Germain? Why, a cousin of mine is being educated there — a Miss Trevyllian. She has been there for three or four years. Do you remember Constance Trevyllian at the Demoiselles Lespard, Miss Floyd?” said Talbot, addressing himself to Aurora.
“Constance Trevyllian? Yes, I remember her,” answered the banker’s daughter.
She said nothing more, and for a few moments there was rather an awkward pause.
“Miss Trevyllian is my cousin,” said the captain.
“Indeed!”
“I hope that you were very good friends.”
“Oh, yes.”
She bent over her dog, caressing his big head, and not even looking up as she spoke of Miss Trevyllian. It seemed as if the subject was utterly indifferent to her, and she disdained even to affect an interest in it.
Talbot Bulstrode bit his lip with offended pride. “I suppose this purse-proud heiress looks down upon the Trevyllians of Tredethlin,” he thought, “because they can boast of nothing better than a few hundred acres of barren moorland, some exhausted tin mines, and a pedigree that dates from the days of King Arthur.”
Archibald Floyd came into the drawing-room while the officers were seated there, and bade them welcome to Felden Woods.
“A long drive, gentlemen,” said he; “your horses will want a rest. Of course you will dine with us. We shall have a full moon tonight, and you’ll have it as light as day for your drive back.”
Talbot looked at Francis Lewis Maldon, who was sitting staring at Aurora with vacant, open-mouthed admiration. The young officer knew that the heiress and her fifty thousand pounds were not for him; but it was scarcely the less pleasant to look at her, and wish that, like Captain Bulstrode, he had been the eldest son of a rich baronet.
The invitation was accepted by Mr. Maldon as cordially as it had been given, and with less than his usual stiffness of manner on the part of Talbot.
The luncheon-bell rang while they were talking, and the little party adjourned to the dining-room, where they found Mrs. Alexander Floyd sitting at the bottom of the table. Talbot sat next to Lucy, with Mr. Maldon opposite to them, while Aurora took her place beside her father.
The old man was attentive to his guests, but the shallowest observer could have scarcely failed to notice his watchfulness of Aurora. It was ever present in his careworn face, that tender, anxious glance which turned to her at every pause in the conversation, and could scarcely withdraw itself from her for the common courtesies of life. If she spoke, he listened — listened as if every careless, half-disdainful word concealed a deeper meaning, which it was his task to discern and unravel. If she was silent, he watched her still more closely, seeking perhaps to penetrate that gloomy veil which sometimes spread itself over her handsome face.
Talbot Bulstrode was not so absorbed by his conversation with Lucy and Mrs. Alexander as to overlook this peculiarity in the father’s manner toward his only child. He saw, too, that when Aurora addressed the banker, it was no longer with that listless indifference, half weariness, half disdain, which seemed natural to her on other occasions. The eager watchfulness of Archibald Floyd was in some measure reflected in his daughter; by fits and starts, it is true, for she generally sank back into that moody abstraction which Captain Bulstrode had observed on the night of the ball; but still it was there, the same feeling as her father’s, though less constant and intense — a watchful, anxious, half-sorrowful affection, which could scarcely exist except under abnormal circumstances. Talbot Bulstrode was vexed to find himself wondering about this, and growing every moment less and less attentive to Lucy’s simple talk.
“What does it mean?” he thought; “has she fallen in love with some man whom her father has forbidden her to marry, and is the old man trying to atone for his severity? That’s scarcely likely. A woman with a head and throat like hers could scarcely fail to be ambitious — ambitious and revengeful, rather than over-susceptible of any tender passion. Did she lose half her fortune upon that race she talked to me about? I’ll ask her presently. Perhaps they have taken away her betting-book, or lamed her favorite horse, or shot some pet dog, to cure him of distemper. She is a spoiled child, of course, this heiress, and I dare say her father would try to get a copy of the moon made for her if she cried for that planet.”
After luncheon, the banker took his guests into the gardens that stretched far away upon two sides of the house — the gardens which poor Eliza Floyd had helped to plan nineteen years before.
Talbot Bulstrode walked rather stiffly from his Crimean wound, but Mrs. Alexander and her daughter suited their pace to his, while Aurora walked before them with her father and Mr. Maldon, and with the mastiff close at her side.
“Your cousin is rather proud, is she not?” Talbot asked Lucy, after they had been talking of Aurora.
“Aurora proud! oh no, indeed! perhaps, if she has any fault at all (for she is the dearest girl that ever lived), it is that she has not sufficient pride — I mean with regard to servants, and that sort of people. She would as soon talk to one of those gardeners as to you or me; and you would see no difference in her manner, except that perhaps it would be a little more cordial to them than to us. The poor people round Felden idolize her.”
“Aurora