Читать книгу A Heart-Song of To-day (Disturbed by Fire from the 'Unruly Member') - Annie G. Savigny - Страница 9

No. 2.

Fourteen years later, bringing us by the hand of time into 1868. Same scene—Haughton Hall, morning—and ah! What a dream of beauty, a child, woman now. In the sweet, somewhat sad pleading of her expression, one catches a glimpse of the tender, loving woman of later years, and so her companion, to whose arm she clings, sees her, judging from the half wondering, wholly loving sympathy in his eyes. Her movements are rapid, graceful and lithe as a young gazelle; she has evidently expected a loved guest who has disappointed her. For now her eyes are suffused with tears; she looses his arm and clasps her hands appealingly as she points to an open letter on a table. A vacant chair, slippers, and a petit dinner untasted. He consults his watch, strokes caressingly the bright brown hair reaching to her knees, and fluffy as the coat of a water spaniel. Now taking her hand in adieu, bends his noble head, and with a smile sweet as a woman's, would kiss her, but she is no child this morning and he draws back with a look half wonder in his eyes. The sweet girl too, after turning her flower face upwards, droops the large luminous brown eyes and with a pretty blush takes instead his right hand between her own and presses her rose-mouth to it in a farewell greeting.

The actors are Vaura Vernon (the infant of last scene) who has been expecting her loved uncle, Colonel Haughton, who is at Baden-Baden held in the fascinations of its gaming tables. The handsome man to whose arm she clung is Lieut. Trevalyon of the—th Middlesex Lancers; but lately returned from the East, where, at Delhi, &c., his many daring acts of bravery are still in the public mouth. By invitation he is at Haughton, but his friend cannot tear himself from Germany—it is his ruin; and he yields to the importunities of his bewitching little friend to go and bring him home from this evil.