Aurora Floyd

of Dieppe was dimly visible from the upper windows in the clear autumn mornings, and the Chain Pier looked like a strip of ribbon below the cliff - a pleasanter situation

nt branches of her nature which had been suffered to grow as they would from her infancy. The beautiful shrub was no longer to trail its wild stems along the ground, or shoot upward to the blue skies at its own sweet will; it was to be trimmed, and clipped, and fastened primly to the stony wall of society with cruel nails and galling strips of cloth. In other words, an advertisement was inserted in t

on, with one accord, was seized with the desire to improve the mind and form the manners of the daughter of the gentleman to whom terms were no object. Officers' widows, clergymen's widows, lawyers' and merchants' widows, daughters of gentlemen of high family but reduced means, orphan daughters of all sorts of noble and distinguished people, declared themselves each and every one to be the person who, out of all living creatures upon this earth, was bes

school to marry, and after six months wedded life, had gone back to the same school as instructress of the junior pupils - a woman whose whole existence had been spent in teaching and being taught; who had exercised in her earlier years a species of hand-to-mouth tuition, teaching in the morning that which she learned over night; who had never lost an opportunity of improving herself; who had grown mechanically proficient as a musician and an artist, who had a certain parrot-like skill in for

she will be like Miss Drummond, who used to let me off from my lesson and read novels while I ran wild in the gardens and stables. I can put up w

the vehicle. Mrs. Alexander had gone back to Fulham, having done her duty, as she considered, in securing a protectress for Aurora; but Lucy was to stay with her cousin at Brighton, and to ride with her on the downs. The sadd

leman with a stiff leg rose from a bench upon which he had been seated listening to the band, and slowly advanced to t

d," he said. "I only came this morning, and I was going to c

s a wonderful face for fitful lights and shades. "But we did not expect to see you at

the Eleventh is still at Wi

d her cousin opened their

ve exchanged and gone to India, certainly," he added, as if in answer to some argument

India," said Aurora, loo

but why?" ex

I hate

was France y

circle of people, seeing and hearing of the persons we hate for ever and ever, and unable to get away from the odious sound of their names? I sh

f bewilderment in which this girl always threw him. What did she mean, this heiress of nineteen years of age, by he

ile while he was asking himself this quest

iness than to pay his respects to Mr. Floyd, in token wher

ther useful to the young lady, who was, as we know, accomplished in all lady-like arts. Mrs. Powell, seated in one of the windows of the pleasant drawing-room, shed the benignant light of her faded countenance and pale blue eyes upon the two young people, and represented all the proprieties in her own person. Aurora, when the weather prev

and to be shocked at the purposeless manner in which that young lady spent the rainy mornings. Sometimes he saw her poring over Bell's Life, much to the horror of Mrs. Wal

she did to everything else except her dog and her father. Was it possible that wellnigh perfect face and those haughty graces had no charm for the banker's daughter? Could it be that she could spend hour after hour in the society of the handsomest and most aristocratic man she had ever met, and yet be as heart-whole as when the acquaintance began? There w

d in Lucy Captain Bulstrode's attraction to the East Cliff

and Alboni, and poor Bosio. He had attended them through the whole round of Brighton amusements, and had never seemed weary of their companionship. But for all this, Lucy knew what the last leaf upon the rose would tell her when the many petals should be plucked away, and the poor stem be left bare. She knew how often he forgot to turn over the leaf in the Beethoven sonatas, how often he put streaks of green into a horizon that should have been purple, and touched up the trees in her foreground with rose-pink, and suffered himself to be ignominiously checkmated from sheer inattention, and gave her wandering, random an

and argued with himself upon the folly of loving her, so much the more surely did he love her. The very battle he was fighting kept

e appeared to him illuminating the old Cornish mansion by the radiance of her beauty, fascinating his father, bewitching

ne than to the other of the young ladies. If he had known of that weary game which Lucy was for ever mentally playing with the imaginary rose, I am sure he would not have lost an hour in proposing to her; but Mrs. Alexander's daughter had been far too well educated to

rowing passion had it not been for an event which put an end to his inde

lings that separated them from the road, and a big man, with huge masses of Scotch plaid twisted about his waist and shoulders, sprang out of th

ve thought of seeing you here? I heard you were i

silence while Talbot introduced him to the ladies as Mr. Mellish, an old friend and school-fellow. The stranger stared with such open-mouthe

three Ridings. I'm staying at the Bedford; I've got my stud with me - give you a mount to-morrow morning if you like. Harriers

this big, empty-headed Yorkshireman, with his babble about his stud and hunting-appointments. But, turning sharply round to scrutinize Miss Floyd, he was grat

and innocent joyousness in his face, that he might have been a youngster of eighteen just let loose from some public academy of the muscular Christianity school. I think the Rev. Charles Kingsley would have delighted in this big, hearty, broad-chested young Englishman, with brown hair brushed away from an o

business had he at Brighton? Was n't the biggest county in England big enough to hold him, tha

wall-eyed, or otherwise disqualified for service, but that lived on his bounty like a set of jolly equine paupers, and consumed as much corn as would have supplied a racing-stud. He was perpetually paying for things he neither ordered nor had, and was for ever being cheated by the dear honest creatures about him, who, for all they did their best to ruin him, would have gone through typical fire and water to serve him, and would have clung to him, and worked for him, and supported him out of those very savings for which they had robbed him, when the ruin came. If "Muster John" had a headache, every creature in that disorderly household was unhappy and uneasy till the ailment was cured; every lad in the stables, every servant-maid in the house, was eager that his or her remedy should be tried for his restoration. If you had said at Mellish Park that John's fair face and broad shoulders were not the highest forms of manly beauty and grace, you would have been set down as a creature devoid of all taste and judgment. To the mind of that household, John Mellish in "pink" and pipe-clayed tops was more beautiful than the Apollo Belvidere whose bronze image in little adorned a niche in the hall. If you had told them that fourteen-stone weight was not indispensable to manly perfection, or that it was possible there were more lofty accomplishments than driving unicorns, or shooting forty-seven head of game in a morning, or pulling the bay mare's shoulder into joint that time she got a sprain in the hunting-field, or vanquishing Joe Millings, the East Riding smasher, without so much as losing breath, those simple-hearted Yorkshire servants would have fairly laughed in your face. Talbot Bulstrode complained that everybody respected him, and nobody loved him. John Mellish might have uttered the reverse of this complaint, had he been so minded. Who could help loving the honest, generous squire, whose house and purse were open to all the country-side? Who could feel any chilling amount of respect for the friendly and familiar master who sat upon the table in

mourned with one voice but a few weeks since; when we drew down our blinds, and shut out the dull light of the December day, and listened sadly to the far booming of the guns; when the poorest put aside their work-a-day troubles to weep for a widowed queen and orphaned children in a desolate palace; when rough omnibus-drivers forgot to blaspheme at each other, and tie

ness had flung a spurious lustre upon the dreary saturnalia of vice, to die destitute and despairing. Surely there is some hope that we have changed for the better within the last thirty years, inasmuch as we attach a new meaning to-day to this simple title of "gentleman." I take some pride, therefore, in the two young men of whom I write, for the simple reason that I have