Lady Flora

“ What an age it is since we met!" cried Flora, as the visitor was ushered into the elegant apartment of Lady Legrange, and the cousins exchanged an affectionate embrace.
Has Flora also been altered by the plain gold ring, which often works wonders as strange as those wrought by an enchanter?
Flora is lovely as ever, her beauty enhanced by a womanly dignity which beseems the baronet's wife. But she too has lost the joyous brightness which rested on her gentle countenance when Ada first visited Wingsdale. An expression of thought, almost of melancholy, is there ”

“ She had quite forgiven Flora's unkind words for the sake of her flattering words. Flora had said the sort of things that Susy had often regaled her with before, but how much more important were the honeyed speeches coming from the lips of this grown-up and beautiful young lady. Ermengarde felt herself quite in love with Flora. Poor Lilias was nothing, compared to the friend she had just made. She was glad to know that Flora was going to spend a couple of days at Glendower. ”

“ Flora blushed and laughed as she answered, "Well, I must say it was very wicked of you to be out here eaves-dropping when you ought to have been in bed; and pray, why are you not there?"
"Might I not ask the same question, fair lady?"
"No, it is quite a different thing for me. A lady may have work and a thousand other things to keep her up, but a man has no such excuse."
"And does standing on a balcony in the moonlight get a lady's work done for her?" ”

“ Flora paused for awhile, and played with the clasp of her bracelet, before she ventured to say, "Emma, there was one thing which I wished to ask you--have you perfect confidence in your black nurse?"
The lady opened her eyes. "Oh! she's the best creature in the world!" ”

“ I am not a grumpy old woman." But on their return to London she sought Mrs. Fyne at once. She had discovered that Flora was not naturally cheerful. When she made efforts to be it was still worse. The old lady couldn't stand the strain of that. And then, to have the whole thing out, she could not bear to have for a companion anyone who did not love her. She was certain that Flora did not love her. Why? She couldn't say. Moreover, she had caught the girl looking at her in a peculiar way at times. ”

“ The smiles and leers of Flora's mamma are thrown away at present: the old lady is no less painted, and is possibly more artificially made up than her daughter; her eyebrows owe much to art, her cheeks are evidently high in colour, her faded smirks and glittering eyes are by no means inviting, and a band of velvet across her forehead suggests a suspicion of 'false fronts;' her bonnet is of the gaudiest, a very pinnacle of bows, ribands, and artificial flowers. ”

“ Here she had become an expert in washing and doing up muslins and other fine articles of female attire. But the lady she served died, and Flora became the property of Mr. Penfield, a planter, who, looking on her with the eyes that a cattle-breeder might turn on a Durham cow, ordered her to marry one Bully Bill, a lusty African with a neck like the cylinder of a steam-engine. Flora 75objected, and learning that her objections would not be respected, she ran away, and after various fortunes settled at Montreal. Here she married Peek, who taught her to read and write. ”

“ This made Flora ready to cry with shame and repentance. Her conscience was too tender to allow her to be happy while her fault remained unconfessed.
All the afternoon they had merry games, in which everybody joined. They played "Lady's Toilet," "Hunt the Slipper," and many more such games, winding up with "Blindman's Buff." After this the little girls went home, and Flora was left alone with her papa and mama while the younger children were getting ready for bed. ”

“ Other men had loved Flora Desmond, and love her still. She has had no lack of offers since poor Reggie Desmond died. Over and over again has smart Jack Delamere pressed his suit. He has never loved any woman like he does her, but he presses his suit in vain; for gently, kindly but firmly, Flora Desmond has told him that she will never marry again. She had told Estcourt the same thing when for the first time, now three years ago, he had confessed his love and asked her to marry him. ”

“ For Flora was a young lady of great sensibility, and though, of course, all females are filled by nature with that interesting and appealing quality, the finer amongst them educate and make an art of it. ”

“ Vernon's maid appeared with the doctor.
"Miss Flora!" exclaimed the old servant in a subdued tone of surprise.
The doctor glanced sternly at her, and raised his finger, then advanced silently to Lady Legrange.
"Is she--is she--?" Flora could not finish the sentence.
"My dear lady, she is in God's hands; He may raise her yet. Everything that can be done shall be done ”

“ You must forget yours. It's very simple. Look at me. I always forget mine. At your age one ought to be cheerful."
Later on when left alone with Mrs. Fyne she said to that lady: "I do hope the child will manage to be cheerful. I can't have sad faces near me. At my age one needs cheerful companions."
And in this hope she carried off Flora de Barral to Bournemouth for the winter months in the quality of reader and companion. ”

“ With certain old ladies the passing years bring back a sort of mellowed youthfulness of feeling, an optimistic outlook, liking for novelty, readiness for experiment. The old lady was very much interested: "Do let me see the poor thing!" She was accordingly allowed to see Flora de Barral in Mrs. Fyne's drawing-room on a day when there was no one else there, and she preached to her with charming, sympathetic authority: "The only way to deal with our troubles, my dear child, is to forget them. ”

“ Pontioch! Flora!" I called in guarded tones.
Presently I heard Flora's voice inquiring timidly who I might be.
"Mr. Drogue is arrived to await her ladyship's commands," said I.
At that the bolts slid and the door creaked open. Black Flora stood there in her yellow night shift, rolling enormous eyes at me, and behind her I saw Colas with a lighted dip, gaping to see me enter with a strange woman.
"Is your mistress here?" I demanded.
"Yassuh," answered Flora, "mah lady done gone to baid, suh."
"Who else is here? Mistress Swift?"
"Yassuh."
"Is there a spare bed?" ”

“ But all this was as nothing to the griefs of the next few months; the premature birth of Lady Digby’s baby under the Earl’s roof, the hurried christening before it died, and the death of the young mother,—that little Sarah who, a widow at seventeen, had been married to Lord Digby, the Earl’s most comfortable son-in-law, on the Christmas Day before Robyn was born. ”

“ In this faith she now believed with unshaken firmness, yet she had none of the practical piety of Marie.
[301]
Most applicable to Flora are Lady Georgiana Fullerton's beautiful words in "Lady Bird."... Speaking of characters in whom a craving for excitement is a disease, she says—"There is but one cure for it, call it what you will: self-education, not for this world, but for the next. The work of life understood; perfection conceived and resolutely aimed at; the dream of human happiness resigned, and in the same hour its substance regained ”

“ The expression of the eyes was a rub of pastel from a master's thumb; the whole head, stamped with a sort of showy suffering, had gained a fineness from what she had passed through. Yes, Flora was settled for life--nothing could hurt her further. I foresaw the particular praise she would mostly incur--she would be invariably "interesting." She would charm with her pathos more even than she had charmed with her pleasure. For herself above all she was fixed for ever, rescued from all change and ransomed from all doubt. ”

“ Her gaze wandered from the contemplation of her own loveliness to the girl clad in white standing before the blue velvet portière, that brought into relief the youthful beauty of her figure, the incomparable freshness and delicacy of her colour beneath the heavy plaits of hair that crowned a face in which the dark eyes shone like stars. If in Flora was seen the woman of intellect who had already attempted to pierce the mystery of existence, her youngest sister was the type of maidenly innocence and spotless purity. ”

“ Lady Ranelagh, at whose house, it is probable, they had first met, and who was certainly anxious to see Robyn with a wife of his own at Stalbridge, had been in private conclave with Lady Monmouth; and the Countess herself, the mother of a bevy of daughters, was disposed to look kindly on the young Squire, in [176] spite of his Geneva-bred philosophy, and his not very robust health. For he was the youngest son of a very great family; cultured, amiable, virtuous—and likely to be a moderately rich man, when once his Irish affairs could be put in order. ”

“ If the fair lady who talked so delightfully, were indeed a “beautifull and ingenious daughter” of the Earl of Monmouth, Robert Boyle’s love-story goes into a nutshell. For just a month later came the Countess of Monmouth’s letter to Lady Ranelagh, which so confounded the young squire with its civilities, and contained the invitation to Moore Park. The two young people had already met, and been attracted to one another: the lady’s name had been already spoken of among their mutual friends as that of a possible bride for the young Squire ”

“ And then there was Lady Katharine—wife of Arthur Jones;—the one of all the Earl’s daughters with the finest intellect, the finest character, and, according to report, the most beautiful face. Weighed down as she was by a miserable marriage, she was to rise above all the trials of life, to be remembered by later generations as “Milton’s Friend,” the “Incomparable Lady Ranelagh”, the “dearest, dearest, dearest sister” of Robert Boyle. “A more brave wench or a Braver Spiritt you have not often mett withall,” Sir John Leeke wrote of her in the summer of 1639 ”

“ These women, too, seemed to enjoy greatly any sort of row and were always ready to combine together to make awful scenes to the luckless girl on incredibly flimsy pretences. Thus Flora on one occasion had been reduced to rage and despair, had her most secret feelings lacerated, had obtained a view of the utmost baseness to which common human nature can descend--I won't say _a propos de bottes_ as the French would excellently put it, but literally _a propos_ of some mislaid cheap lace trimmings for a nightgown the romping one was making for herself. ”

“ The old Earl, when he wrote to Marcombes in January 1640, did not guess the sequels to these two little romances. For though the wedding clothes were making, Broghill was never to marry Mrs. Harrison, whom he, like many other gallants, had “passionately loved.” On the contrary, it was Mr. Thomas Howard, “not much harmed,” who was to be the happy man; and the lady whom Broghill was presently to marry was the Lady Margaret Howard, the beautiful daughter of the Earl and Countess of Suffolk, and a cousin of Mr. Thomas Howard. ”

“ The party that set out from Coleshill, on September 1st, included Lady Digby, whose second baby was born inconveniently the day after their arrival in Oxford, in the house of Dr. Weston, Lady Cork’s uncle, in Christchurch. “Dick” was now at Christchurch, with Arthur Loftus and the young Earl of Kildare; and Lettice and Joan both met their fates during this visit, Lettice marrying, very soon after, George Goring, handsome, plausible, dissolute and cold; while Joan was promised to the wild young “Faerie Earle” of Kildare. ”

“ They may very well have made shy advances to one another during those weeks in the autumn of 1639 when Frank and Robyn were in London, just before Frank’s wedding. The House of the Savoy and Salisbury House were very near each other; the families were often together; and little Ann Howard—her mother dead—was often with Lady Salisbury. The two children may even have made a pretty and much-admired pair at Frank’s wedding in Whitehall, and hence may have come the old Earl’s confident “My Robyn’s yonge Mrs.” ”

“ In January 1636 the Lord Deputy was inviting himself to supper at the Earl’s Dublin house, and bringing Lady Wentworth with him. Lady Dungarvan’s baby was born in March, a “ffair daughter”, to be christened Frances, and to figure in the old Earl’s diary as “lyttle ffranck”; and the Lord Deputy himself stood sponsor, though he had just lost his own little son, and the Dungarvan christening had been postponed till the Wentworth baby had been buried. But the Lord Deputy’s “sharp pursuit” of men was going on all the same. ”

“ Grose herself for, the pleasure I could see her feel in my admiration and wonder as I sat at supper with four tall candles and with my pupil, in a high chair and a bib, brightly facing me, between them, over bread and milk. There were naturally things that in Flora’s presence could pass between us only as prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and roundabout allusions.
“And the little boy—does he look like her? Is he too so very remarkable?”
One wouldn’t flatter a child. ”

“ The London flower-girl, good-looking as she often is, is yet, perhaps, hardly an ideal embodiment of the goddess Flora. To begin with, she is generally enveloped in a thick, rough, unromantic, fringed shawl, and wears an enormous black hat with a still more enormous feather, the latter in sad need of curling. Her abundant hair is coiled loosely on to the nape of her neck, and hangs, in a thick black fringe, over her eyes and ears; anything more totally unlike the dainty, slim, Venetian flower-girl can hardly be imagined. ”