CHAPTER XI.

CONCERNING FLIRTATION.

The next noon proved a lovely autumnal one, and Sybil repaired once more to the tarn for the purpose of giving a few finishing touches to her sketch. She would have blushed with annoyance, and indignantly repudiated the idea that a chance of the stranger being there, perhaps, for the same purpose, led her to go at precisely the same hour as on the preceding day. And yet, though a disappointment, it was somewhat of a relief to her, that neither he nor his great dog were in sight; the floating swans and the huge rock-pillar alone met her eye in the solitude; and seating herself, she spread out her skirts, threw up her veil, and assumed her pencil; but in the midst of her work, her tiny white hand grew tremulous, every pulse quickened, and a thrill passed through her when she heard steps among the long rank grass; the great nose of the Thibet mastiff was placed upon her knee, and she perceived her new friend again approaching, but on horseback.

_He_ had not made even the pretence of coming to sketch as on the preceding morning; he was without the materials for doing so, and hence must have come deliberately in search of her, for he dismounted.

"I am indeed fortunate in meeting you here again," said he, "but I shall not intrude, as I fear I did yesterday; I am merely rambling towards the sea-shore, to enjoy the breeze and a cigar till some friends join me."

Sybil, who felt that she was painfully pale, bowed to her new acquaintance, who manifested no haste to prosecute his "ramble," but seemed perfectly confident and disposed to be politely familiar. Still Sybil had no emotion of alarm at this; she had never in her life been insulted, and felt that there was no real cause to repulse him, save that he was a visitor of the Trecarrels.

He, on the other hand, while gazing from time to time into her upturned face, was struck more by the calm, honest, and innocent expression of her radiant features than by their beauty, which was less that of form than of character, for though small and exquisitely feminine, her face, like that of her mother, was strongly marked, by the darkness of her eyes, their brows and long lashes. Her mouth certainly was beautifully formed, with a soft smile ever playing about it, for she was naturally of an arch and highly impressionable nature.

He did not permit the conversation to flag, but hovered near her, venturing to look over her shoulder from time to time, and giving little suggestions concerning her drawing, while in reality he was admiring the ladylike contour of her head, the delicacy of her slender neck, and the gloss of a single thick dark ringlet that strayed so captivatingly behind.

The first flush of emotion passed away in Sybil's breast, and insensibly she found herself lured into an easy interchange of opinion on various subjects; for in the topics of foreign travel, the galleries, habits, tastes, and amusements of other lands, they had ample matter for conversation, and found themselves sliding into the position of friends, and talking of things and themes that seldom occupy the thoughts of a young girl.

Now, as each knew not the name of the other, and could not ask it, there was a decided awkwardness in this; and as they continued to talk with animation, the huge Thibet mastiff, who had been their _introducteur_, rolled his great dark eyes from one to the other, and lashed the grass with his tail, as if quite satisfied with the result.

"After the colourless Indo-Britons and yellow Bengallees, how lovely seems the complexion of this fresh young English girl!" was the ever-recurring thought of the young officer, as he surveyed her critically, from her smart hat and feather to her foot that peeped from under her dress; and a lovely little foot it was--tiny enough to have entered the famous slipper of Cinderella.

That the solitary girl was a lady was evident to him; her carriage and bearing were full of graceful ease, and she had an attraction of manner and gesture peculiarly her own; but _who_ was she, that she, at her early years, had seen so much of the world, and could speak of Spain and Rome, of Athens and Sicily, and seemed to know every second village among the wilds of the Apennines and the Abruzzi?

The sketching of this day was somewhat protracted, and Sybil became aware that their eyes sought each other with an interest she had never felt before in those of a stranger, and that each time they so met, her pulses quickened and her cheek flushed or grew pale. Whence was this emotion? she whispered in her heart.

"I shall often think of this moorland tarn, when I am far away," said the officer.

"You leave this soon, then?" she remarked.

"Yes; I am, ere long, going back to India."

"My brother Denzil has gone there to join his regiment."

Had the stranger asked the almost inevitable military question, "What regiment?" a little discovery might have been made; but he was full of the girl's beauty, and thought of that only. Something of admiration or of ardour in his eyes inspired her with confusion, and abruptly closing her book as on the preceding day, she rose from the bank on which she had been seated, and said, with a little trepidation,

"I am going now, and--and here our sketching and meetings must end."

"Ah! why?"

"I fear," she stammered as she spoke, aware that her speech was full of awkwardness--"I fear that I have done wrong in--in----"

"What?"

"Engaging in quite a flirtation with a total stranger."

"You cannot flirt--you are too sensible and artless; neither could I--with you, at least."

"Have you never flirted?" asked Sybil, laughing to cover what she felt to be a second mistake.

"Often."

"Then why not with me?" she asked naïvely and archly.

"First, tell me what is flirtation?"

"I know what it is; but cannot define or describe it."

"Shall I make the attempt?"

"Do, please," said Sybil, now laughing outright.

"It is neither coquetry nor exactly playing at courtship. It is one of those things most difficult indeed of description and of definition. It depends so much upon the time and place, the tone and tenor of those who attempt it, and on the mood of the moment, whether it be sad or gay. It is perilous work among the young and beautiful, as it is often so much mere nonsense, and yet is so much more dangerous to one's peace of mind than any nonsense could ever be. It is not so earnest or solemn as deliberate love-making, and yet it is not quite a mockery of it. It is a sharp weapon in the hands of the wary; but a dangerous pastime for those who have had no experience in _affaires du coeur_. It is a kind of lovemaking that commits one to no promise, and yet may raise the proudest and wildest anticipations in the breast, and elicit the most unwary confidence. Thus it is difficult to find where flirtation exactly begins, and still more to say where it may end--perhaps in real love and marriage. I fear I have read you quite a dissertation on the subject, a most hazardous one while looking into your bright eyes; and now tell me," added the officer, his tone and manner becoming more soft and earnest, "have you not done injustice to yourself and to me, for in all we have talked over so pleasantly both yesterday and to-day has anything of this vague kind been attempted?"

"Most certainly not," replied Sybil, laughing again.

"With you it would indeed be perilous for me," said the officer, taking her hand caressingly between his own; "for I could not feign, where I would rather feel."

His eyes were dark and deep, their colour a kind of blue, difficult to define, but unfathomable in expression, though very soft just then; and now Sybil grew pale, for if the speaker was not flirting, he had suddenly slid into downright love-making; so she said, with an effort--

"We have been here more than an hour; am I not detaining you from your friends?"

"Perhaps," said he, with an air of pique; "pardon me for looking at my watch. Two o'clock, by Jove! and I promised to meet the Trecarrel girls on the Camelford road half-an-hour ago. I shall catch it from little Rose for this! And now good morning--pardon me again if I have seemed intrusive, but I do not despair of our meeting again."

He had mounted while speaking, and, lifting his hat with studious politeness, cantered off, while Rajah went bounding and barking before him.

"What a bright little fairy it is--and so clever with her pencil! who the deuce can she be?" he was thinking, while Sybil, with a vague sense of disappointment and doubt, looked after him, half fearing that she had been too pointed in her hint that he should leave her; and yet how were they to continue such meetings as strangers.

In her lonely life, at least latterly, since they had settled at Porthellick, she had met but few persons, and with none so pleasing as this young officer.

She hoped to meet him again on a more recognisable footing, for she felt that though stolen interviews might be very sweet, they could not be without some peril; and to the young girl's mind, it seemed that the formation of the acquaintance--the whole adventure--was quite like some of the episodes to be read of in novels; for a box from "Mudie's," came regularly to Porthellick Villa, and perhaps, by the laws of such literature, her strange friend might prove a peer of the realm--a prince it might be, incog.; who could say?

Sybil lingered long by the lonely tarn, watching the white swans floating among the broad-leaved water-lilies, thinking over all the stranger had said, recalling the pleasantly modulated tones of his voice and the expression of his dark blue eyes (if blue they were), till the sound of hoofs on the distant highway drew her attention in that direction, and with something perhaps of jealousy and pique, she saw him gallop past with two ladies, both well mounted on bright bay horses. They were the Trecarrels, dashing and handsome girls, and the sound of their merry voices and ringing laughter came clearly over the moor as they rode at a scamper towards Lanteglos, on the roof of the old parish church of which the arms of the Trelawneys and Trecarrels have been carved for centuries.

"And these girls have him with them always," thought she, as she turned homeward. "What matter is it to me--the acquaintance of a couple of days? why should the idea of him affect me so?"

After this day she sought the vicinity of the rock-pillar and the tarn no more.

She was too open and candid in all her actions, and loved her mamma too well to conceal ultimately from her the pleasant interviews she had by the moorland tarn "with such a delightful young man;" but there her confidence ended; she did not give the additional information that on three successive Sundays, when mamma was too ill to attend church, he had lingered or walked by the side of her basket-phaeton, to the manifest annoyance of the Misses Trecarrel, or that she had faintly promised, _some_ day, to make with him a joint sketch of certain rocks upon the sea-shore; still less did she whisper, that in her secret heart she liked him well, or trusted to time or chance for the establishment of an interchange of thought as yet concealed, "as though the bridge between them was yet too frail to cross;" and Constance, occupied solely by solicitude concerning the now-protracted absence of her husband, did not at first make any inquiries.

Sybil found the stranger's image, his tones and words recurring perpetually to her mind in spite of herself, and she blushed at the conviction. She had few male friends--beyond the burly rector and old village doctor, perhaps none--and certainly none that she had met elsewhere proved so graceful and winning as this unknown admirer. To her partial eyes, he seemed the beau-ideal of manly beauty, while to those of others--even the Trecarrel girls--he was simply a passably handsome fellow.

"Why do I think of him at all?" she would ask of herself: "though so young, he may be married--or engaged--engaged perhaps to that Rose Trecarrel of whom he seemed so much afraid the other day. Yet he may surmise the same of me--I, Sybil Devereaux, married!" and then she laughed at her own conceit.

"There is a depth in the human heart which, once stirred, is long, long, ere its waters again subside," and this depth he had contrived to stir in the heart of Sybil. She who had seemed as bright as the day, and happy as the blackbird that sang on the adjacent rose-trees, became silent and thoughtful and apt to indulge in dreamy moods.

Old Winny Braddon was the first to detect this; and so she set herself to watch, and hence the hints she gave to Constance--hints which caused the production of the sketch-book, with some confusion on Sybil's part, as recorded in our tenth chapter, and she took her young favourite to task in the usual mode of old nurses, by commenting upon the enormity of thinking of love or marriage at her years.

Now Sybil, like every young girl of her age, had her day-dreams of a lover, just such a lover as this, but she had not, as yet, thought of marriage. Such a catastrophe--such a separation from "dearest mamma"--had not quite entered her mind; but now, by Winny Braddon's remarks, it seemed to be thrust upon her consideration. She blushed and felt abashed, as if the modesty of her nature had been assailed, and her girlish mind was filled with a vague sense of dread and awe, she knew not of what or of whom.

However, it chanced that on the last day he had lingered by the side of her pony-phaeton for a few minutes, resting his arms on the side thereof in such a way that she could not, without positive rudeness, have driven off, she had been resolving, but not without a struggle in her heart, that she would place herself in his way no more.

"This must end," had been her thought; "it is most unfair to poor mamma, and is unwise for my own peace of mind;" and it was while she thus determined, he came to her smiling, and leaning on the side of the little phaeton, when the Trecarrels were conversing with the rector's family, said in his pleasant voice,

"Shall we ever resume the little discussion we had so merrily on that delightful day beside the old rock-pillar?"

"Discussion--on what?" asked Sybil, timidly.

"Flirtation--Miss Devereaux."

"What! you know my name?"

"Yes; I am happy to say I do now, Sybil Devereaux."

"How came this to pass?"

"Simply enough: the Trecarrel girls told me."

"But I do not know them," said Sybil, with a tone of pique.

"May I have the pleasure of introducing----"

"Excuse me, please, but not just now," said she, hastily, remembering how her father had ever avoided the family of the General.

"And now I must tell you my name--Audley Trevelyan, late of the 14th Hussars."

"I have surely heard it before," said Sybil, pondering, "but where I know not now."

It was in the _Gazette_ together with that of Denzil, but she had forgotten the circumstance, and he said, smiling still,

"You may easily have heard it--the name is peculiar to Cornwall, and my uncle is Lord Lamorna."

"Indeed! all Cornwall has heard that the late lord was a very, very proud man.

"Absurdly so; but I must bid you adieu. Rose Trecarrel is impatient."

"We are going, Mr. Trevelyan," said that young lady, with some asperity of tone, from the window of the carriage in which she and her sister were seated; and lifting his hat, Audley hastened to join them. The footman threw up the carriage-steps, fussily closed the door, and they departed. So, as doubtless the reader has foreseen, Sybil's admirer was her own cousin; yet neither knew of the relationship.

She drove off in a somewhat dubious state of mind, amid which, as she permitted the reins to drop listlessly on the backs of her two little ponies and allowed them to go at their own pace, she gave way to the current of thought, and ended in a quiet shower of tears, which, however, calmed and soothed her. She had an undefined emotion of pique alike at this stranger, Mr. Trevelyan, and Rose Trecarrel; and as she had been learning to love the former, she resented his extreme intimacy with the latter, and she knew all the perils of propinquity with a girl so lovely as Rose undoubtedly was.

Hence, more than ever did she resolve to avoid him, and even sought to nurse herself into emotions of anger by fancying there was something that savoured of forwardness in the mode in which he had recently addressed her. The moment she reached home and tossed the reins to the groom, she hastened to the side of Constance.

"Oh, mamma," she exclaimed, in a tumult of excitement, "I have discovered the name of the gentleman about whom you spoke to me lately!"

"The hero of the sketch-book, and it is--what?"

"Mr. Audley Trevelyan; don't you think it so pretty?"

Constance was silent for nearly a minute. Then foreseeing much trouble and danger if this intimacy were permitted to ripen before her husband's return, and the full recognition of herself, her son and daughter, in their proper place, and in society in general--society, "that Star Chamber of the well-bred world,"--she said, with grave energy, while taking Sybil's flushed face between her soft white hands,--

"Promise to me, darling, that you will meet him no more--at least until advised by your papa."

"I give you my promise, dearest mamma."

"Remember that he is the friend, the guest, of those Trecarrels whom your papa has ever avoided for reasons best known to himself, though they seem people of the best style; and you owe this obedience to him in his absence."

"Have no fear for me, mamma; I shall ever obey you," replied Sybil, as she threw her arms round her mother's neck and kissed her to conceal the tears that were welling up in her fine dark eyes.