第30章

'That's nonsense, Miss Cass, and I shall,' said Lady Mabel. They were together on the morning after the little dinner-party described in the last chapter, in a small back sitting-room which was supposed to be Lady Mabel's own, and the servant had just announced that Mr Tregear was below.

'Then I shall go down too,' said Miss Cassewary.

'You'll do nothing of the kind. Will you please to tell me what it is you are afraid of? Do you think that Frank is going to make love to me again?'

'No.'

'Or that if I chose that he should I would let you stop me? He is in love with somebody else,--and perhaps I am too. And we are two paupers.'

'My lord would not approve of it.'

'If you know what my lord approves of and he disapproves you understand a great deal better than I do. And if you mind what he approves or disapproves, you care for his opinion a great deal more than I do. My cousin is here now to talk to me,--about it his own affairs, and I mean to see him,--alone.' Then she left the room, and went down to that in which Frank was waiting for her, without the company of Miss Cassewary.

'Do you really mean,' she said, after they had been together for some minutes, 'that you had the courage to ask the Duke for his daughter's hand?'

'Why not?'

'I believe you would dare to do anything.'

'I couldn't very well take it without asking him.'

'As I am not acquainted with the young lady I don't know how that might be.'

'And if I took her so, I should have to take her empty-handed.'

'Which wouldn't suit;--would it?'

'It wouldn't suit for her,--whose comforts and happiness are much more to me than my own.'

'No doubt! Of course you are terribly in love.'

'Very thoroughly in love, I think I am.'

'For the tenth time, I should say.'

'For the second only. I don't regard myself as a monument of constancy, but I think I am less fickle than some other people.'

'Meaning me?'

'Not especially.'

'Frank, that is ill-natured, and almost unmanly,--and false also.

When have been fickle? You say that there was one before with you.

I say that thee has never really been one with me at all. No one knows that better than yourself. I cannot afford to be in love till I am quite sure that the man is fit to be, and will be, my husband.

'I doubt sometimes whether you are capable of being in love with anyone.'

'I think I am,' she said, very gently. 'But I am at any rate capable of not being in love till I wish it. Come, Frank, do not quarrel with me. You know,--you ought to know,--that I should have loved you had not been that such love would have been bad for both of us.'

'It is a kind of self-restraint I do not understand.'

'Because you are not a woman.'

'Why did you twit me with changing my love?'

'Because I am a woman. Can't you forgive as much as that to me?'

'Certainly. Only you must not think that I have been false because I now love so dearly.'

'I do not think you are false. I would do anything to help you if there were anything I could do. But when you spoke so like a Romeo of your love,--'

'Why not like a Romeo, if I feel like a Romeo?'

'But I doubt whether Romeo talked much to Rosaline of his love for Juliet. But you shall talk to me of yours for Lady Mary, and I will listen to you patiently and encourage you, and will not even think of those former vows.'

'The former vows were foolish.'

'Oh--of course.'

'You at least used to say so.'

'I say so now, and they shall be as though they had never been spoken. So you bearded the Duke in his den, and asked him for Lady Mary's hand,--just as though you had been a young Duke yourself and owned half a county?'

'Just the same.'

'And what did he say?'

'He swore that it was impossible.-Of course I knew all that before.'

'How will it be now? You will not give it up?'

'Certainly not.'

'And Lady Mary?'

'One human being can perhaps never answer for another with perfect security.'

'But you feel sure of her.'

'I do.'

'He, I should think, be very imperious.'

'And so can she. The Pallisers are all obstinate.'

'Is Silverbridge obstinate?' she asked.

'Stiff-necked as a bull if he takes it into his head to be so.'

'I shouldn't have thought it.'

'No;--because he is so soft in his manner, and often finds it easier to be led by others than to direct himself.'

Then she remained silent for a few seconds. They were both thinking of the same thing, and both wishing to speak of it. But the words came to her first. 'I wonder what he thinks of me.'

Whereupon Tregear only smiled. 'I suppose he has spoken to you about me?'

'Why do you ask?'

'Why?'

'And why should I tell you? Suppose he should have said to me in the confidence of friendship that he thinks you ugly and stupid.'

'I am sure he has not said that. He has eyes to see and ears to hear. But, though I am neither ugly nor stupid, he needn't like me.'

'Do you want him to like you?'

'Yes, I do. Oh yes; you may laugh; but if I did not think that I could be a good wife to him I would not take his hand even to become the Duchess of Omnium.'

'Do you mean that you love him, Mabel?'

'No; I do not mean that. But I would learn to love him. You do not believe that?' Here he again smiled and shook his head. 'It is as I said before, because you are not a woman, and do not understand how woman are trammelled. Do you think ill of me because I say this?'

'No, indeed.'

'Do not think ill of me if you can help it, because you are almost the only friend that I trust. I almost trust dear old Cass, but not quite. She is old-fashioned and I shock her. As for other women, there isn't one anywhere to whom I would say a word. Only think how a girl such as I am is placed; or indeed any girl. You, if you see a woman that you fancy, can pursue her, can win her and triumph, or lose her and gnaw your heart;--at any rate you can do something. You can tell her that you love her; can tell her so again and again even though she should scorn you. You can set yourself about the business you have taken in hand and can work hard at it. What can a girl do?'