The moments flew rapidly till, as we have said, three quarters of an hour had passed, as it were a minute; and neither Colonel Manners nor Isadore Falkland would have known that it had passed at all, had not a clock struck in the hall hard by, and Isadore suddenly thought that _somebody_--that great bugbear _somebody_--might deem it strange that she sat talking to Colonel Manners alone in the library, while the rest of the family were probably in the drawing-room. She now remembered, also, that she had still her riding-habit to change; and having by this time quite forgotten that Colonel Manners was an ugly man, she made the alteration of her dress an excuse to leave him, though, to speak truth, she broke off their conversation with regret, and felt inclined to look upon the moments she had thus spent as one of the pleasantest things she had yet met with in the garland of time--that garland which begins in buds and blossoms, and ends in blighted flowers and withered leaves.
Manners, for his part,--though he had from the first thought her a very beautiful girl, and a very charming one, too,--had by this time determined that she was possessed of many a more admirable quality of mind and grace of person than he had even believed before; and an involuntary sigh, which broke from his lips when she left him taught him, to feel that it was as well, upon the whole, that he was so soon to take his departure. It was a part of his policy never to encourage regrets in regard to a state of life which he had made up his mind could not be his; and he found that to live long in the same house with Isadore Falkland might cultivate those regrets much more than was desirable.
When she was gone, he thought for a moment over what had just passed, gave another moment to memories of the long gone, spent two or three more in trifling with the book he held in his hand, and then, after changing his boots in his own room, proceeded to the drawing-room. Mrs. Falkland was now there alone, but it was not long before Isadore again appeared; and, in a few minutes after, De Vaux, as we have before shown, entered the room for a single instant to enquire for Marian. Neither his aunt nor his cousin perceived that any thing had occurred to disturb his equanimity; but the eyes of his friend, quickened perhaps by what he already knew, discovered without difficulty that the pain which had been given him by the letter he had himself delivered was not at all diminished by reflection; and although he felt that he could ask no questions, he was not a little anxious for the result.