第56章

'I wish I knew your sister. Is she--firm?'

'Indeed she is.'

'I am not so sure you are.'

'No,' said he, after considering awhile; 'nor am I. But she is not like Gerald or me. She is more obstinate.'

'Less fickle perhaps.'

'Yes, if you choose to call it fickle. I don't know that I am fickle. If I were in love with a girl I should be true to her.'

'Are you sure of that?'

'Quite sure. If I were really in love with her I certainly should not change. It is possible that I might be bullied out of it.'

'But she will not be bullied out of it?'

'Mary? No. That is just it. She will stick to it if he does.'

'I would if I were she. Where will you find any young man equal to Frank Tregear?'

'Perhaps you mean to cut poor Mary out.'

'That isn't a nice thing for you to say, Lord Silverbridge. Frank is my cousin,--as indeed you are also; but it so happens that I have seen a great deal of him all my life. And, though I don't want to cut your sister out, as you so prettily say, I love him well enough to understand that any girl whom he loves ought to be true to him.' So far what she said was very well, but she afterwards added a word which might have been wisely omitted.

'Frank and I are almost beggars.'

'What an accursed thing money is,' he exclaimed, jumping up from his chair.

'I don't agree with you at all. It is a very comfortable thing.'

'How is anybody who has got it to know if anybody cares for him?'

'You must find that out. There is such a thing I suppose as a real sympathy.'

'You tell me to my face that you and Tregear would have been lovers only that you are both poor.'

'I never said anything of the kind.'

'And that he is to be passed on to my sister because it is supposed that she will have some money.'

'You are putting words into my mouth which I never spoke, and ideas into my mind which I never thought.'

'And of course I feel the same about myself. How can a fellow help it? I wish you had a lot of money, I know.'

'It is very kind of you;--but why?'

'Well;--I can't quite explain myself,' he said, blushing as was his wont. 'I daresay it wouldn't make any difference.'

'It would make a great difference to me. As it is, having none, and knowing as I do that papa and Percival are getting things into a worse mess every day, I am obliged to hope that I may some day marry a man who has got an income.'

'I suppose so,' said he, blushing, but frowning at the same time.

'You see I can be very frank with a real friend. But I am sure of myself in this--that I shall never marry a man I do not love. A girl needn't love a man unless she likes it, I suppose. She doesn't tumble into love as she does into the fire. It would not suit me to marry a poor man, and so I don't mean to fall in love with a poor man.'

'But you do mean to fall in love with a rich one?'

'That remains to be seen, Lord Silverbridge. The rich man will at any rate have to fall in love with me first. If you know of any one you need not tell him to be too sure because he has a good income.'

'There's Popplecourt. He's his own master, and fool as he is, he knows how to keep his money.'

'I don't want a fool. You must do better for me than Lord Popplecourt.'

'What do you say to Dolly Longstaff?'

'He would be just the man, only he never would take the trouble to come out and be married.'

'Or Glasslough?'

'I'm afraid he's cross, and wouldn't let me have my own way.'

'I can only think of one other;--but you would not take him.'

'Then you had better not mention him. It is no good crowding the list with impossibles.'