"Pledged till thou reach the verge of womanhood,
And shalt become thy own sufficient stay!
Too late I feel, sweet orphan! was the day
For steadfast hope the contrast to fulfil;
Yet still my blessing hover o'er thee still."
WORDSWORTH.
Lady Rohallion had so frequently spoken to Flora Warrender on the subject of the proposed or expected marriage with Cosmo, that she had little diffidence generally in approaching the subject; but now there was a new and unexpected feature in the matter—a lover, a rival—thus she felt aware that the adoption of some tact became requisite.
What the good lady could hope to achieve, where her enterprising son had failed in person, it is difficult to imagine; nevertheless, she resolved to remonstrate with Flora.
"She is too young to judge for herself, and must therefore let others judge for her," said she, half aloud.
"You wished to see me, madam," said Flora, entering with an air of annoyance, only half concealed by a smile, as she correctly feared this formal summons had reference to the recent scene in the garden.
Seating Flora beside her on a sofa, she took her by the hand, and while considering what to say, played caressingly with her dark wavy hair, and said something in praise of her beauty, so the girl's heart foreboded what was coming next.
"You are rich, dear Flora," said Lady Rohallion, insinuatingly, "but most, perhaps, in beauty."
"I am often told so, especially by you," replied Flora, laughing.
"An heiress, too."
"But what of it, madam?" she asked, gravely.
"You know, dear Flora, that money is the key to a thousand pleasures—it is alike the object of the avaricious, and the ambition of the poor."
"True, Lady Rohallion," replied Flora, smiling again; "but, as we say in Scotland, a tocherless lass, though she may have a long pedigree, may have a pleasure that no heiress can ever enjoy."
"Indeed?"
"Yes; the most flattering and glorious conviction!"
"Pray tell me?"
"She can prove to her heart's content that she is loved for herself, and herself alone. Poverty makes all equal——"
"True; but so does wealth," interrupted Lady Rohallion, annoyed by her own mismanagement in the beginning. "You are rich, but my son is also rich, and he loves you, Flora, well, truly, and devotedly."
"And have two days sufficed to summon all this truth and devotion?"
"Flora, Flora, you are well aware that it has been an old purpose and hope, between your parents and his, to unite or cement their old hereditary friendship by a stronger tie, and that this intended marriage has been an object of solicitude to all——"
"Save to those most interested in it—myself especially."
"Do not say so, my dear child—the match is most suitable."
A gesture of annoyance escaped Flora, but Lady Rohallion resumed:
"Our families have known each other so long; it has been a friendship of three generations—Cosmo and you suit each other so admirably; and then the Ardgour lands run the whole length of the Bailiwick with our own."
"The most convincing argument of all," replied Flora, in a tone which made Lady Rohallion colour deeply, and the secret annoyance of both was gradually rising to a height, though each strove to conceal it.
"Consider our family, Flora!" exclaimed Lady Winifred, haughtily; "look at that gilded vane on yonder turret. It bears a date—1400; in that year, Sir Ranulph, first baron of Rohallion, was made Hereditary Admiral of the Firth of Clyde, from Glasgow Bridge to Ailsa Craig, by the Regent Duke of Albany. We are not people of yesterday!"
Flora failed to perceive what this aqueous office had to do with her or her affairs.
"In three years," she began. "I shall cease to be your ward——"
"Three, by your father's will, Flora."
"So do not let us embitter those three remaining years, my dear madam, by this project, a constant recurrence to which serves but to excite and pique by the attempt to control me."
"I trust, my dear but wilful Flora, that we have not been unjust stewards in the execution of the trust your worthy parents bequeathed to us, and if the hope of a nearer and dearer connexion——"
"Your son, the Master, is a brave and noble gentleman, I grant you," interrupted Flora, with quiet energy; "but save in name, we have been almost strangers to each other, and he is so many years my senior, that when we last met he treated me quite as a little girl—a child! Our tastes, habits, manners, and temper are all dissimilar; ah, madam, pardon me, but I never could love him!"
"Never love Cosmo—my Cosmo?" said Lady Rohallion, with indignant surprise.
"Never as a husband, though dearly as a friend."
"Fancy, all! You would love him with all a true wife's devotion ere long. In girls of your age, love always comes after marriage, it is unnecessary before it. You little know how dear and loveable he is, and how gallant too! What wrote Sir Ralph Abercrombie to the Duke of York concerning him, after that affair at the Helder? 'The bravery of the Honourable Captain Crawford, of the 3rd Guards, in the action of the 27th instant, forms one of the most brilliant episodes of the war in Holland!'"
Flora gave an almost imperceptible shrug of her white shoulders, for praises of Cosmo's valour at the Helder had been a daily story of the old lady for some time past. Slight though the shrug and the smile that accompanied it, Lady Rohallion detected them, and her eyes sparkled brightly with anger. She arose with ineffable hauteur, and shook out her flounces, as a swan ruffles its pinions, to their fullest extent.
"Miss Warrender," said she, with her hands folded before her, and her powdered head borne very erect indeed, "is it possible that this strange opposition alike to the earnest wishes of the living and of the dead, arises from a cause which I have hitherto disdained to approach or allude to—as a species of midsummer madness—a love for the luckless lad to whom for so many years we have extended the hand of protection, Quentin Kennedy?"
At the name which concluded this formal exordium, a deep blush suffused the delicate neck of Flora; but, as her back was to the lighted candles, the questioner did not perceive it, though scrutinising her keenly.
"And why, madam, may I not love poor Quentin, if I choose?" asked the wilful Flora, bluntly.
"Because he is, as you justly named him, poor," replied the other, with calm asperity.
"But I am rich," urged Flora, laughing through all her annoyance, with an irresistible desire to pique Lady Rohallion.
"He is nameless."
"How know we that, madam? Kennedy is as good a name as Warrender."
"True, when borne by an Earl of Cassilis, by a Laird of Colzean, of Kilhenzie, or Dunure; but not by every landless waif who bears the name of the clan or family. God knoweth how in my heart I dearly love that boy; yet this fancy of yours passes all bounds of reason, and all my expectations, in its absurdity. I have destined you for my son, Cosmo, and none other shall have you!" she added, almost imperiously.
"Destined," said Flora, with mingled laughter and chagrin, "because the march-dyke of Rohallion is also the march-dyke of Ardgour."
"Nay, nay, think not so unworthily of us; we need to covet nothing and to court none; but destined you are, because it was your dear mother's dying wish."
"To make me miserable?"
"To make you happy, foolish girl; dare you speak of misery with my son?"
"So you would actually have me to marry a man I don't like, and scarcely ever saw? It is a common sacrifice in the great world, I am aware; but my sphere has been rather small——"
"You would not marry a boy, surely?"
"I may at least love him," replied Flora, simply; "and I have no wish to marry at all—just now, at least."
"This is the very stuff of which your novels are made!" exclaimed Lady Rohallion, crimsoning with passion, and raising her voice in a manner quite unusual to her. "Mercy on me! I wonder why I have never detected Quentin at your feet, on his knees before you, for that I believe is the true and most approved mode; but we know nothing of him, he may be base-born for aught that we can tell, and Lord Rohallion shall learn that Quentin Kennedy—a brat, a very beggar's brat—shall never come between our own son and his success; and so, young lady, your humble servant!"
And inflamed by genuine passion, Lady Rohallion, as she uttered this unpleasant speech, (which, to do her justice, was scarcely uttered ere repented for,) in a loud and imperious tone, swept away with a haughty bow, in all her amplitude of black satin, and with that hauteur of bearing which made the Scottish gentlewomen of her day so stately and imposing.
Her words, the fiery glance of anger she darted at Flora, and the tenor of the expostulation proved too much for the temper or the nerves of that young lady, who on being left to herself, burst into a passion of tears.
But a hand was laid on the lock of the door, as if some one was about to enter; and fearing it might be the Master, she started up and escaped by another door to her own apartment.