218
WYLDMR'S HAJVD
Now, Sir Harry's rudeness to Lake had not been, 1 am
afraid, altogether accidental. The baronet was sudden and
vehement in his affairs of the heart; but curable on short
absences, and easily transferable. He had been vehemently
enamored of the heiress of Brandon a year ago and
more; but during an absence Mark Wylder's suit grew up
and prospered, and Sir Harry Bracton acquiesced; and,
to say truth, the matter troubled his manly breast but
little.
He had hardly expected to see her here in this rollick-
ing rustic gathering. She was, he thought, even more
lovely than he remembered her. Wylder had gone off
the scene, as Mr. Carlyle says, into infinite space. Who
could tell exactly the cause of his dismissal, and why the
young lady had asserted her capricious resolve to be
free?
There were pleasant theories adaptable to the circum-
stances; and Sir Harry cherished an agreeable opinion of
himself; and so the old flame blazed up wildly, and the
young gentleman was more in love then, and for some
weeks after the ball, than perhaps he had ever been be-
fore.
Now some men — and Sir Harry was one of them —
are churlish and ferocious over their loves, as certain
brutes are over their victuals. In one of those tender
paroxysms, when in the presence of his dulcinea, the
young Baronet was always hot, short, and saucy, with his
own sex; and when his jealousy was ever so little touch-
ed, positively impertinent.
He perceived what other people did not, that Miss Bran-
don's eye once on that evening rested on Captain Lake
with a peculiar expression of interest. This look was but
once and momentary; but the young gentleman resented
it, brooded over it, every now and then, when the pale