Next day I heard the stranger's story, and it was a sad one. Georgette Franklin--for such was her unmarried name--was the last surviving child of George Franklin, a decayed gentleman, who dwelt in Salop, near the Welsh border--we need not precisely say where, but within view of the green hills of Denbigh; for the swelling undulations of the beautiful Clwydian range formed the background to the prospect from the windows of that quaint old house which was nearly all that survived of his hereditary patrimony. Stoke Franklin--so named as it occupied the site of a timber dwelling of the Saxon times, coeval perhaps with Offa's Dyke--was still surrounded by a defensive ditch or moat, where now no water lay, but where, in the season, the primroses grew in golden sheets on the emerald turf. It was an isolated edifice, built of dark-red brick, with stone corners, stone mullions to its quaint old sunken windows, and ogee pediments or gables above them, also of stone. From foundation to chimneys it was quaint in style, ancient in date, and picturesque in aspect. Long lines of elms, and in some places pollard willows, marked the boundaries of what had been the demesne of the Franklins; but piecemeal it had passed away to more careful neighbours, and now little remained to George Franklin but the ground whereon the old mansion-house stood, and that sombre green patch in God's-acre, the neighbouring churchyard, where his wife and their four children lay, near the ancient yew, the greenery of which had decorated the altar in the yule feasts of centuries ago, and whose sturdy branches had furnished bow-staves for the archers who shot under his ancestors at Bosworth, at Shrewsbury, and Flodden Field.
George Franklin was not a misanthrope; far from it; but he lived very much alone in the old house. His oaken library, so solemnly tranquil, with its heavy dark draperies and book-hidden walls, when the evening sun stole through the deep mullions of the lozenged and painted windows, was his favourite resort. And a cozy room it proved in winter, when the adjacent meres were frozen, and the scalp of Moel Fammau was powdered with snow. There he was wont to sit, with Georgette by his knee, he reading and she working; a bright-faced, brown-haired, and lively girl, whose golden canaries and green love-birds hung in every window; for the house was quite alive with her feathered pets, and was as full of sound as an aviary with their voices in summer. One warm evening in autumn, when Georgette was verging on her eighteenth year, she and her father were seated near the house-door, under a shady chestnut-tree. The sunshine lay bright on the greensward, and on the wilderness of flowers and shrubs that grew close to the massive red walls of the old mansion. Mr. Franklin was idly lingering over a book and sipping a glass of some dark and full-bodied old port--almost the last bottle that remained in his now but ill-replenished cellar. And a very perfect picture the old man made. His thin but stately figure; his features so patrician in profile; his dress somewhat old in fashion; his hands, though faded, so shapely, with a diamond ring on one finger, the diamond ring of which we have heard so much lately; and the handsome girl who hovered about him, attending to his little wants, varying her kind offices with playful caresses, while her white neck and her golden-brown hair glittered in the sunshine--all this seemed to harmonise well with the old house that formed the background to the picture. The evening was quiet and still. The voices of Georgette's birds, her caged canaries and piping bullfinches, came through the open windows; but there were no other sounds, save once or twice when the notes of a distant hunting-horn, prolonged and sad, came on the passing wind, and then the old man would raise his head, and his clear eye would sparkle,
"As he thought of the days that had long since gone by,
When his spirit was bold and his courage was high;"
and when he, too, had followed that sound, and ridden across the stiffest country, neck and neck with the best horsemen in Salop and Cheshire.
Suddenly there came a shout, and a huntsman in red, minus his black velvet cap, was seen to clear a beech-hedge on the border of the lawn; and ere an exclamation of annoyance or indignation could escape old George Franklin, that his privacy should be invaded, even by a sportsman, in this unwonted manner, a cry of terror escaped Georgette; for it was evident that the gentleman's horse had become quite unmanageable, as the bridle-rein had given way; and after its terrible leap, it came tearing at a mad pace straight towards the house, and dashing itself head foremost against a tree, hurled the rider senseless on the ground. He rolled to the very feet of Georgette and her father, both of whom were full of pity and compassion, the former all the more so that the stranger was undoubtedly a handsome man, and barely yet in the prime of life. Aid was promptly summoned, and the village doctor, anxious to serve, for a time at least, one whom he deemed a wealthy patient, earnestly seconded, and even enforced, the suggestion of the hospitable George Franklin, that the sufferer, whose head was contused, and whose shoulder-blade had narrowly escaped fracture, should neither be removed nor disturbed. Hence he was at once assigned a room in the old mansion, with Georgette's old Welsh nurse, now the housekeeper, to attend him. He was a man, however, of a strong constitution, "one of those fellows who are hard to kill," as he phrased it; thus, on the third morning after the accident, he was well enough to make his way to the breakfast room.
Georgette, attired in a most becoming muslin dress, and looking fresh, rosy, and innocent, as a young girl can only look who has left her couch after a healthy slumber to greet the sunny morning, was standing on a chair in an oriel, attending to the wants of one of her feathered pets; suddenly the chair slipped, and she was about to fall, when a strong arm, in the sleeve of a scarlet hunting-coat, encircled and supported her. This little contretemps made both parties at once at home, and on easy terms.
"Mr. Guilfoyle!" exclaimed the girl, for it was he.
"Miss Franklin, I presume?"
"Are you well already?" she asked.
"Nearly so," said he, smilingly, as he took in all the girl's beauty at a glance, together with the pleasant view beyond the antique oriel, where the morning sun came down on the shining leaves, covering all the dewy ground, as it were, with drops of golden light; and the quaint old house, he thought, seemed such a pleasant home.
"How happy papa will be!" said the young lady, colouring slightly under his somewhat critical gray--or rather green--eye. "I should have nursed you myself, instead of old nurse Wynne," she added, archly.
"In that case I should have been in no hurry to announce my convalescence," said he, rather pointedly; "may I ask your name--the first one, I mean? Somehow, I fancy that I can judge of character by the name."
"Georgette Franklin."
"Georgette!"
"I am called after papa."
"A charming name!" he exclaimed, but in a low tone.
Naturally frank and honest, purely innocent, and assured of her own position, and of that of her father--for though poor now, he was one of England's old untitled aristocracy--the girl felt neither awkwardness nor shyness with her new friend, who, though polished in manner, easy, and not ungraceful, was a thorough man of the world, and selfishly ready to take advantage of every place and person who came in his way; and a very simple one, indeed, was the kind old gentleman who now came to welcome his visitor, to express fears that he had left his couch too soon; and critically and keenly this hawk, who was now in the dove's nest, eyed him, and saw, by the thinness of his hair, his spare figure and wrinkled face, "delicately lined by such characters as a silver stylus might produce upon a waxen tablet," that his years could not be many now; yet his keen gray eyes were full of bright intelligence still, and were shaded by lashes as long and silky as those of his daughter.
Hunting and breakfast were discussed together. Mr. Guilfoyle seemed, or affected to be, an enthusiast in old English sports, professing that he loved them for themselves and from their associations; and quite won George Franklin's heart by stigmatising the "iron horse" of civilisation, which was now bearing all before it; and his host seemed to grow young again, as he recurred to the field exploits of his earlier years, over the same ground which Mr. Guilfoyle--who had been on a visit to the house of some friend twenty miles distant--had hunted so recently: round beautiful Ellesmere, by Halston and Hordley, by the flat fields of Creamore, by the base of wooded Hawkstone, where he had made many a terrible flying leap, and away by Acton Reynald; all this ground had Guilfoyle gone over but lately, and, as the event proved, almost fatally for his own bones, and more fatally for his future peace of mind, as he pretty plainly indicated to Miss Franklin on every available opportunity, in the softest and most well-chosen language. Though able to leave his room, he was neither permitted to leave the house nor attempt to mount; so he wrote to his friend, had some of his wardrobe sent over to Stoke Franklin, and, encouraged by the hearty hospitality of its owner, took up his quarters there for an indefinite period; at least, until his hunting friend should depart for Madeira, whither he had promised to accompany him; for Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle seemed somewhat of a cosmopolitan, and rather peripatetic in his habits. He had been over one half the world, according to his own accounts, and fully intended to go over the other; so he proved a very agreeable companion to the hitherto lonely father and daughter in that secluded mansion in Salop. Merciful it is, indeed, that none of us can lift the veil that hides the future; thus little could George Franklin foresee the influence this man was to exert over the fate of his daughter and himself, when he listened to his plausible anecdotes, or sat alone and happy in his shady old library, communing pleasantly with his ancient favourites--with Geoffrey Chaucer, the knightly pages of Froissart, Dame Juliana Berners on hunting and hawking, and works, rare as manuscripts, that came from the antique press of Caxton and De Worde. Mr. Guilfoyle found himself in very pleasant quarters, indeed. It was ever his principle to improve the occasion or the shining hour. Georgette was highly accomplished, and knew more than one language; so did he; so week after week stole pleasantly away.
By them the touching airs of Wales, the merry chansons of Wronger, were played and sung together; and she it was, and no Princess of Catzenel............