probably checked my development of an attachment that I have since thought was waiting to break out on my side. Tall, lithesome, with earnest hazel eyes, and soft silken brown hair, she could not have been more fascinating had she been an angel of beauty.
One could never look in her face without seeming to read the depth and fervour of her simple heart. A winning though retiring candour pervaded her whole person. Quiet and subdued in manner, she was perfectly open and frank in all she said and did. She inspired confidence with the first glance of her eye, and alas, as I have reason to know, she yielded it but too readily and fearlessly when it was sought by others. Well, I was not myself in love with her. In her eyes I was but as a boy. “Cecil, remember,” she would say to me, “that you are baby, you goose,” and I never had the hardihood to dispute that truth, nor could I make up my mind to be offended at its enunciation. For she was so taking—the tones of her voice were so soft and true, and her hair—well I may be excused for referring to it again, for have I not a small piece of it before me now?
But there was another reason for my not presuming upon hopes, against which my youth was itself a sufficient impediment.
Edith Gersom, as years drew on, yielded her heart to some one else. I say, as years drew on,—because when the affair commenced, I never knew. I have a sort of idea that the fact rather crept upon me, than that it was communicated to me as an actual occurrence that had taken place. I know that I disliked the favoured party even at the time when he could have been no more than a pretender. Not that I had any other ground for my antipathy than the instinct which is more or less inherent in the rest of mankind. Eldred (that was his name) was, to look at, tall, dark, handsome, and unobjectionable, and withal studiously civil to me. Edith, too, tried to interest my sympathies in his favour.
“Cecil, he is so clever and learned,” she would say, “and he does so desire to be great. Oh! cousin, if you could learn from him!”
Thank God, I never did. The only deed for which he rendered himself famous, being the betrayal of the purest and warmest heart that ever beat.
The engagement between Eldred and my cousin hung on for, I should say, about two years. One other person in the household, besides myself, did not look upon the gentleman with the favour which he undoubtedly contrived to receive from the rest. That other person was Colonel Gersom, my uncle. And he, I think, was more against the match than against the man with whom it was to be contracted. What his exact scruples were, neither of the lovers would say. He was a grave, thoughtful, reserved man, morbidly sensitive on religious matters, and I have sometimes fancied that something on this score stood in the way of that final consent for which the young people were waiting, and which was, in the end, rather abruptly and harshly refused. That this refusal was ever distinctively anticipated in the earlier stages of the transaction I do not believe. Else why should my uncle permit this man to visit the house, unchecked, during so long a period, and the two to be thrown together in unreserved intercourse in rides and drives, and in other ways, on all occasions?
This licence was more dangerous, perhaps, for a girl of Edith’s temperament, circumstanced as she was then, than it would have been for another. Trustful and confiding as she was herself, she had found, during her young life, but few receptacles for those feelings for which an ardent, passionate nature most craves.
Her mother had died when she was a mere child. Her father, though treating her always with a sort of sombre kindness, never had her confidence. She had no playfellow, except myself, and after Eldred became her accepted lover, there seemed, on some points, almost a distance between us. Besides, I was constantly away, and at last it appeared to me that my sweet cousin had bestowed on the one centre of affection the entire tendrils of her heart, and lived and breathed for none other.
I was just seventeen years of age when I returned to Yssbrooke to spend my last Harrow vacation. In another six months I was to go up to Cambridge. It was summer time, but the weather was gloomy and cheerless—dull also, though not rainy. Well do I remember the depression of spirits with which I drove by the edges of the lake through the park. The water looked so black and dull that my very heart seemed to shiver at the sight of it. This was the more remarkable as of all spots connected with Yssbrooke, I loved the lake most. It had been to me a constant source of recreation. I had fishing from it in spring time, and many’s the summer-night I had spent musingly on its broad surface. The wild fowl upon its sedgy banks afforded many a fair day’s sport, and in quieter moments the walks around ministered to my brooding and eccentric humour. But now there was a black meaning in its dull waters, half fretted by the fitful gusts of wind which swept across it, that filled me with foreboding. My companion, too, who had met me with the country trap at the neighbouring market-town, an old domestic as loquacious, on ordinary occasions, as anything connected with Yssbrooke could be, displayed a taciturnity which did not detract from my uneasiness. The questions I had put to him on the road respecting the news, the state of the crops, the welfare of the estate, and the health of the different members of the family, had either been answered evasively or put aside as not apprehended. It was then, with a distrust I could not master, that we approached the house, gladly, to my mind, for if there was anything amiss, Edith would clear up the mystery, or in default of her, old Markham, a quondam nurse, and later companion of my young cousin, with whom I had always been a favourite, and whose gossiping propensities I had come sometimes to regard as a virtue amid the prevailing closeness of the inmates of Yssbrooke. Not to be prolix, I may at once come to what she did tell me—it was not