CHAPTER VIII.

BEFORE THE STORM.


So the dinner at Audley Court was postponed, and Miss Alicia had to wait
still longer for an introduction to the handsome young widower, Mr.
George Talboys.

I am afraid, if the real truth is to be told, there was, perhaps,
something of affectation in the anxiety this young lady expressed to
make George's acquaintance; but if poor Alicia for a moment calculated
upon arousing any latent spark of jealousy lurking in her cousin's
breast by this exhibition of interest, she was not so well acquainted
with Robert Audley's disposition as she might have been. Indolent,
handsome, and indifferent, the young barrister took life as altogether
too absurd a mistake for any one event in its foolish course to be for a
moment considered seriously by a sensible man.

His pretty, gipsy-faced cousin might have been over head and ears in
love with him; and she might have told him so, in some charming,
roundabout, womanly fashion, a hundred times a day for all the three
hundred and sixty-five days in the year; but unless she had waited for
some privileged 29th of February, and walked straight up to him, saying,
"Robert, please will you marry me?" I very much doubt if he would ever
have discovered the state of her feelings.