Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/417

Rh Rupert Kirke, a lieutenant in the Bengal army, arrived at Venice, where Mrs. Maitland and her niece were then staying, also, like Falkland, on his way home. Kirke was first cousin to Cunningham and his sister, and brought an introduction from the former. "A clever fellow," said the brother, in his letter, "and a first-rate soldier, with a great future before him, if he only keeps straight." And indeed Rupert Kirke looked every inch a soldier, and although not the least a lady's man, as the term is understood, was found to be excellent company; well-mannered, well-dressed, well-read, and apparently both good-natured and good-tempered. Olivia took a great liking to her new-found relative, while Kirke for his part did not conceal his gratification in her society, nor, although he made little pretence of caring for pictures or churches, his enjoyment of the sight-seeing excursions made under her guidance — excursions, however, in which Mrs. Maitland invariably joined, for Olivia was no longer a child. And after he had passed on to England, a correspondence was maintained between the two, when Kirke's clever letters came to be very interesting to the fair recipient. The elder lady, however, did not respond with warmth to the feelings of her companion about the letters and their writer, without being a keen judge of character, there appeared something of hardness and apparent unscrupulousness about Kirke which instinctively repelled her; and Olivia perceiving that her aunt did not share her admiration for him, did not seek to exchange confidences with her on the subject.

Kirke too, as well as Falkland, expressed the intention when leaving Italy of paying his relatives another visit, but was diverted from carrying it into effect by the outbreak of the Crimean war, at the first rumour of which he set out for Constantinople, seeking employment as a volunteer with the Turkish army. In this capacity he seemed on the road to enhance his military reputation, when he was unfortunately tempted to accept a commission in the Turkish contingent, and thereby found himself shelved from active service during the remainder of the war, on the termination of which he was obliged to return to India.

To Olivia Cunningham, sailing for India, the change of life was even more complete than to the other young ladies who were borne in the same steamer with her out of Southampton Docks. They, for the most part, though leaving friends and homes behind them, had been brought up to regard England as a temporary resting-place, and the voyage to India as the culminating point in their girlhood. To Olivia this departure for that country came as the result of a sudden resolve, made necessary by the breaking-up of European ties. Nor had she ever known the meaning of home as that term is understood. For her it had not meant sisters and brothers, and home interests, and a settled dwelling-place. Her home, so far as she had been able to realize the idea, had been a suite of apartments at Florence, succeeded by a suite of apartments at Rome or Naples; her friends had been passing visitors, acquaintances, foreigners and English, met and dropped; and although the relation between her aunt and herself had been based on mutual love and affection, her heart could not but whisper when the former announced her coming change of life, involving a new and absorbing interest of her own, apart from her niece, that after all there must be a difference between a mother and even the kindest aunt; henceforward, at any rate, their lives must run apart. Her father, on the other hand, had so far been a sort of shadowy providence watching over her from a distance, whose manifestations were mainly associated with punctual remittances, handsome presents, and brief, infrequent letters; and whose very form and features were as yet unknown.

 

much as to the antecedents of the maiden who had arrived at Mustaphabad at the opening of our story, fancy free, although with two more or less dim ideals of the hero type in her imagination, looking with eagerness, but without much emotion, to the meeting with her father. As to Mr. Cunningham, he was a man too much occupied with official duties and the business of the hour to practise mental analysis; but probably his feelings on the occasion were of a mixed nature, compounded of a pleasurable excitement at the expectation of greeting his beautiful young daughter, and a sense of dismay at the prospect of this invasion of his leisure and enforced alteration of his old-bachelor habits.

The first meeting between two persons who, though nearly related, are yet virtually strangers, ignorant of each other's thoughts, feelings, and tastes, even of