UNVEILED AT LAST.

Observer, Volume 9, Issue 530, 16 February 1889, Page 14

UNVEILED AT LAST.

OF course,' said Aurora Daleford, ' I must manage to live in some way.' She looked like an Eastern sultana as she reclined there among the soft pillows in her pinlc cashmere morning dress, with rings glittering on her slender fingers and a gold chain clasped round her alabaster-white throat— a dark-eyed beauty, with a rich olive skin as fine-grained as Velvet, and lips red and rich as a rose. ' Nevertheless,' said brisk little Phoebe Topperton, ' I would not engage myself to a man old enough to bP.my grandfather.' ' What do TcWe how old he is!' said Aurora, indifferently. • He'll leave me a gay young widow all the sooner,'

' Oh, Aurora !' "V ' And oh, Phcebe ! Tes>-Jt£all very well for you to talk about iudependence"^nd that sort of thing, but I have no taste for plain sewing, and governessing and giving niusi£ lessons, and I regard Colonel Percival's offer £*s a special interposition of Providence.' \

Miss Topperton looked at her beautiful companion with a sort of grave surprise. Was Aurora Daleford wicked, or was she simply reckless? 1 I'd rather teach all my days,' she broke out vehemently, ' than sell myself as you are doing, Aurora !' And Miss Daleford broke into a merry, mocking laugh. The two girls did not comprehend one another ; it was not likely that they ever would. ' And in the meantime,' said Aurora, ' I intend to have just the gayest time I possibly canbreak a score of hearts, and indulge in all the flirtations Cupid sends in my way.' ' And Colonel Percival ?' ' Oh, he's down at Percival Manor, furnishing up the grey old walls and refitting the house to make it suitable for a bride. Jfc'.v safe enough.' ' Do you think he would like it, if he knew you were riding out every day with Gerald Fabringham, and going to operas and soirees with Mark Alburtifo ?' ' Like it ? No, of course not ; but, you see, he doesn't know. He will keep me close enough when we are once married ; I may as well stretch my butterfly wings a little, first.' And Aurora laughingly took up tha French novel she had laid aside on the first entrance of her friend. Aurora Daleford was a thoroughly heartless coquette, one of those managing, maneuvering girls who seem created without the softer and more womanly impulses of their sex. It had been her life-long ambition to marry rich, and in old Colonel PercivaFs offer, she deemed she had at last realized that ambition. While Guy Percival, chivalrous and tender-hearted as Bayard himself, fancied that in Aurora Daleford he had found the queen rosebud of womanhood, and taxed his brain to prove to the young beauty that the old man could be appreciative of her love. And while Aurora was moving through the giddy round of dissipation, under the flimsy pretext, which would have availed with no one less simple-hearted and innocently credulous than Guy Percival, of ' getting her wedding things,' her affianced husband was striving to make the old manor a fitting casket for the pearl so soon to be enshrined therein. All was done with special reference to Aurora's taste, the conservatories were filled with her favourite flowers, the lawns were laid out after the most modern style, and a sparkling little fountain was made just where the* outlook from her dressing room window could command its lily-edged marble basin, and the rooms were all furnished in rose and gold, and dove-colour. ' I think she will like it,' said Colonel Percival looking round at the holiday guise of the stately old manor house. 'My darling Aurora ; surely she needs some recompense for giving up her blooming youth to cheer the gray old age of a place like Percival Manor.' And his heart grew strangely tender within him, and he read and re-read for the fifth or sixth time the last letter Aurora had sent him. ' I am so weary of the hcartlesss display of city life,' she wrote in a flourishing Italian hand, with violet ink on scented paper, thin as a roseleaf. ' I sigh for you, dear Guy, and the sweet seclusion oi the darling old manor house. I ask myself daily and hourly what you are doing, and thei? chide myself for love's folly. But we shall soon be reunited, and then farewell to all this hollow show, this round of endless monotony.' ' What have / done ?' Guy Percival asked himself, with a thrill of happy exultation at his heart, 'to win— even to deserve — such love as this !' And so, when the upholsterer wrote to him to ask his decision as to the colour of the satin in which the drawing-room furniture was to be recovered, Colonel Percival resolved, instead of writing back an answer, to go up to town himself for a day or two. ' It will be a pleasant surprise for Aurora,' ho thought, ' and I can see my cousin, Fred Alrmgton, who has just come back from India, and ask him to be one of my groomsmen.' Thus reasoning, Guy Percival packed his valise and took the express train for town that same evening, still carrying Aurora Dalei'ord's rosescented letter next to his heart. lie went straight to the large hotel where he knew Mr Alrington was stopping, and revived himself with cool water and a refreshing nap before he sent his card in to his relative. Fred Alrington, a handsome, warm-hearted young fellow of two or three-and-twenty, was much rejoiced to see " the jolly old boy," as he mentally christened Colonel Percival. 1 Going to be married, eh ?' said Fred, wringing his relative's hand until the colonel involuntarily winced. 'I 'm sure I congratulate you ; and I'll be your groomsman with all the pleasure in life.' And Fred Alrington rattled away at such a rate that Colonel Percival had no chance to go into the particulars of his matrimonial venture, whether he wished to or act. He went as soon as he could escape to No. 00 street, where Aurora Daleford was making her temporary home, but Miss Daleford had gone j out ; the servant thought she would not be back until late; so with a sigh the colonel was compelled to abandon the hope of seeing her that evening. He went back to the hotel, where I Fred was making himself gorgeous in full-dress suit, with white silk necktie and primrosecoloured gloves. ' Just come with me this evening, Percival,' said he, ' and I'll show you the stunningest girl in town — a regular dasher, who drives half-a-dozen love affairs in hand at once.' Colonel Percival winced ; the tone of modern slaug struck unpleasantly on his unaccustomed ears. But the long, dull evening lay before him. and he did not see why he might not as well accept his young cousin's invitation.' < Where is it ?' he asked. A ball at Mrs Le Clercque's. I'll be your sponsor, and you'll have the jolliest kind of time, especially if Aurora Daleford is there.' 'Aurora Daleford 1' • Yes ; an odd name, isn't it ? but she's a regular stunner. They say she's engaged to two or three at once, as a general thing; and the Morton suicide last week — she was at the bottom of it. Harry Morton thought he was sure of her, and sha threw him over at the last moment for the Count Victor d'Estrange, a regular Apollo of a Frenchman, and so— but you are ill, or tired out, or

something, Percival ! What makes you look so ' Nothing-nothing ' gasped Colonel Percival. 'Its the light, that's all. Let us go I am anxious to see your queen of love ana beauty ' And he laughed harshly as he spoke As he entered the flower- canopied rooms of Mrs Le Clereque's mansion, the first person he saw was Aurora Daleford, in lemon-coloured silk and' pearls -the very pearls he had sent her scarcely a week before— gliding through the dance on the arm of a dashing young man in a military uniform. J He haunted her like a shadow. Had she been mesmerically inclined she might have felt; the fiery light of his beaming eyes following hexeverywhere. When Count Victor d'Estrange stooped to kiss the little gloved hand as he restored the bouquet to it, when Gerald Fabringham broke out into a passionately jealous remonstrance with her for devoting so much time to the volatile young Frenchman, when Mark Alburtis slipped a note, half buried in a knot of fragrant Neapolitan violets, into her hand. Guy Pereival saw and heard it all. And finally in the cool silence of the conservatory, when heheard her tell the count that ' she might one day learn to love him' were it not that she was already affianced to a grey-haired old man with one foot in the graye ', Colonel Percival felt his heartgrow chill as ice ■within him. The count laughed gayly. ' Let us hope that the other foot will soon follow it,' he said, ' and then as a bewitching widow — ' Aurora laughed, too— a sweet, mocking sound, like the sound of a falling cascade of bright drops. Oh, fie, count,' she twittered, 'and yet, of course, one knows that he cannot live forever, for-' At that instant Colonel Percival stepped before her, pale but very calm. ' Let us put an end to all speculation upon that subject,' he said composedly. ' Whether I live or die will hereafter be a matter of no consequence to Miss Daleford, for here, upon the spot, I resign all claims to her hand.' And so he parted from her, forever. Aurora stood aghast. Percival Manor, the Percival diamonds, the almost limitless wealth belonging to the Pereival estate, all— all had melted away like a vapour, in that one second. She had flirted too much, a baleful destiny had shown her to her affianced husband as she really was, and the golden dream of prosperity was over. Aurora Daleford had missed her shining mark, and Colonel Guy Percival lived unmarried to the day of his death.