第224章

'There will be scrapings they tell me,--unless Percival refuses to agree. This house is mortgaged, but not for its value. And there are some jewels. But all that is detestable,--a mere grovelling among mean hundreds; whereas you,--you will soar among--'

'Oh Mabel! do not say hard things to me.'

'No, indeed! why should I,--I who have been preaching that comfortable doctrine of hypocrisy? I will say nothing hard. But I would sooner talk of your good things than my evil ones.'

'I would not.'

'Then you must talk about them for my sake. How was it that the Duke came round at last?'

'I hardly know. She sent for me.'

'A fine high-spirited girl. These Pallisers have more courage about them than one expects from their outward manner.

Silverbridge has plenty of it.'

'I remember telling you he could be obstinate.'

'And I remember that I did not believe you. Now I know it. He has that sort of pluck which enables a man to break a girl's heart,--or to destroy a girl's hopes,--without wincing. He can tell a girl to her face that she can go to the--mischief for him. There are so many men who can't do that, from cowardice, though their hearts be ever so well inclined. "I have changed my mind." There is something great in the courage of a man who can say that to a woman in so many words. Most of them, when they escape by lies and subterfuges. Or they run away and won't allow themselves to be heard of. They trust to a chapter of accidents, and leave things to arrange themselves. But when a man can look a girl in the face with those seemingly soft eyes, and say with that seemingly soft mouth,--"I have changed my mind",--though she would look him dead in return, if she could, still she must admire him.'

'Are you speaking of Silverbridge now?'

'Of course I am speaking of Silverbridge. I suppose I ought to hide it all and not tell you. But as you are the only person I do tell, you must put up with me. Yes;--when I taxed him with his falsehood,--for he had been false,--he answered me with those very words! "I have changed my mind." He could not lie. To speak the truth was a necessity to him, even at the expense of his gallantry, almost of his humanity.'

'Has he been false to you, Mabel?'

'Of course he has. But there is nothing to quarrel about if you mean that. People do not quarrel now about such things. A girl has to fight her own battle with her own pluck and her own wits. As with these weapons she is generally stronger than her enemy, she succeeds sometimes although everything else is against her. I think I am courageous, but his courage beat mine. I craned at the first fence. When he was willing to swallow my bait, my hand was not firm enough to strike the hook in his jaws. Had I not quailed then I think I should have-"had him".'

'It is horrid to hear you talk like this.' She was leaning over from her seat, looking black as she was, so much older than her wont, with something about her of the unworldly serious thoughtfulness which a mourning always gives. And yet her words were so worldly, so unfeminine!

'I have got to tell the truth to somebody. It was so, just as I have said. Of course I did not love him. How could I love him after what has passed? But there need have been nothing much in that. I don't suppose that Duke's eldest sons often get married for love.'

'Miss Boncassen loves him.'

'I dare say the beggar's daughter loved King Cophetua. When you come to distances such as that, there can be love. The very fact that a man should have descended so far in the quest of beauty,--the flattery of it alone,--will produce love. When the angels came after the daughters of men of course the daughters of men loved them. The distance between him and me is not great enough to have produced that sort of worship. There was no reason why Lady Mabel Grex should not be good enough wife for the son of the Duke of Omnium.'

'Certainly not.'

'And therefore I was not struck, as by the shining of la light from heaven. I cannot say that I loved him, Frank,--I am beyond worshipping even an angel from heaven.'

'Then I do not know that you can blame him,' he said very seriously.

'Just so;--and as I have chosen to be honest I have told him everything. But I had my revenge first.'

'I would have said nothing.'

'You would have recommended--delicacy! No doubt you think that women should be delicate let them suffer what they may. A woman should not let it be known that she has any human nature in her. I had him on the hip, and for a moment I used my power. He had certainly done me a wrong. He had asked for my love,--and with the delicacy which you commend, I had not at once grasped at all that such a request conveyed. Then, as he told me so frankly, he "changed his mind"! Did he not wrong me?'

'He should not have raised false hopes.'

'He told me that--he had changed his mind. I think I loved him then as nearly as I ever did,--because he looked me full in the face.

Then,--I told him that I had never cared for him, and that he need have nothing on his conscience. But I doubt whether he was glad to hear it. Men are so vain! I have talked too much about myself.

And so you are to be the Duke's son-in-law. And she will have hundreds of thousands.'

'Thousands perhaps, but I do not think very much about it. I feel that he will provide for her.'