Sunday, November 4, 2012

a very beautiful profile certainly

A Lancashire family! If Talbot Raleigh Bulstrode could have known that the family name was Prodder; that one member of the haughty house had employed his youth in the pleasing occupations of a cabin-boy, making thick coffee and toasting greasy herrings for the matutinal meal of a surly captain, and receiving more corporal correction from the sturdy toe of his master’s boot than sterling copper coin of the realm — if he could have known that the great aunt of this disdainful creature, walking before him in all the majesty of her beauty, had once kept a chandler’s shop in an obscure street in Liverpool, and, for aught any one but the banker knew, kept it still! But this was a knowledge which had wisely been kept even from Aurora herself, who knew little, except that, despite of having been born with that allegorical silver spoon in her mouth, she was poorer than other girls, inasmuch as she was motherless. Mrs. Alexander, Lucy, and the captain overtook the others upon a rustic bridge, where Talbot stopped to rest. Aurora was leaning over the rough wooden balustrade, looking lazily at the water.
“Did your favorite win the race, Miss Floyd?” he asked, as he watched the effect of her profile against the sunlight; not a very beautiful profile certainly, but for the long black eyelashes, and the radiance under them, which their darkest shadows could never hide. As Talbot said this, he observed, for the first time, that Archibald Floyd was near enough to hear their conversation, and, furthermore, that he was regarding his daughter with even more than his usual watchfulness.
“Do not talk to me of racing; it annoys papa,” Aurora said to the captain, dropping her voice. Talbot bowed. “I was right, then,” he thought; “the turf is the skeleton. I dare say Miss Floyd has been doing her best to drag her father’s name into the Gazette, and yet he evidently loves her to distraction; while I—” There was something so very pharisaical in the speech that Captain Bulstrode would not even finish it mentally. He was thinking, “This girl, who, perhaps, has been the cause of nights of sleepless anxiety and days of devouring care, is tenderly beloved by her father, while I, who am a model to all the elder sons of England, have never been loved in my life.”
At half-past six the great bell at Felden Woods rang a clamorous peal that went shivering above the trees, to tell the country-side that the family were going to dress for dinner; and another peal at seven to tell the villagers round Beckenham and West Wickham that Maister Floyd and his household were going to dine; but not altogether an empty or discordant peal, for it told the hungry poor of broken victuals and rich and delicate meats to be had almost for asking in the servants’ offices — shreds of fricandeaux and patches of dainty preparations, quarters of chickens and carcasses of pheasants, which would have gone to fatten the pigs for Christmas but for Archibald Floyd’s strict commands that all should be given to those who chose to come for it.

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