'When men love stale instead of fresh, withered better than blooming, excellence in the abstract rather than the palpable. With their idle prate of feminine intellect, and a grotto nymph, and a mother of Gracchi! Why, he must think me dazed with admiration of him to talk to me! One listens, you know. And he is one of the men who cast a kind of physical spell on you while he has you by the ear, until you begin to think of it by talking to somebody else. I suppose there are clever people who do see deep into the breast while dialogue is in progress. One reads of them. No, my dear, you have very cleverly managed to show him that it isn't at all possible: he can't. And the real cause for alarm, in my humble opinion, is lest your amiable foil should have been a trifle, as he would say, deceived, too much in earnest, led too far. One may reprove him for not being wiser, but men won't learn without groaning that they are simply weapons taken up to be put down when done with. Leave it to me to compose him. — Willoughby can't give you up. I'm certain he has tried; his pride has been horridly wounded. You were shrewd, and he has had his lesson. If these little rufflings don't come before marriage they come after; so it's not time lost; and it's good to be able to look back on them. You are very white, my child.'
'Can you, Mrs. Mountstuart, can you think I would be so heartlessly treacherous?'
'Be honest, fair Middleton, and answer me: Can you say you had not a corner of an idea of producing an effect on Willoughby?'
Clara checked the instinct of her tongue to defend her reddening cheeks, with a sense that she was disintegrating and crumbling, but she wanted this lady for a friend, and she had to submit to the conditions, and be red and silent.
Mrs. Mountstuart examined her leisurely.
'That will do. Conscience blushes. One knows it by the conflagration. Don't be hard on yourself… there you are in the other extreme. That blush of yours would count with me against any quantity of evidence — all the Crooklyns in the kingdom. You lost your purse.'
'I discovered that it was lost this morning.'
'Flitch has been here with it. Willoughby has it. You will ask him for it; he will demand payment: you will be a couple of yards' length or so of cramoisy: and there ends the episode, nobody killed, only a poor man melancholy- wounded, and I must offer him my hand to mend him, vowing to prove to him that Suttee was properly abolished. Well, and now to business. I said I wanted to sound you. You have been overdone with porcelain. Poor Lady Busshe is in despair at your disappointment. Now, I mean my wedding-present to be to your taste.'
'Madam!'
'Who is the madam you are imploring?'
'Dear Mrs. Mountstuart!'
'Well?'
'I shall fall in your esteem. Perhaps you will help me. No one else can. I am a prisoner: I am compelled to continue this imposture. Oh, I shun speaking much: you object to it and I dislike it: but I must endeavour to explain to you that I am unworthy of the position you think a proud one.'
'Tut-tut; we are all unworthy, cross our arms, bow our heads; and accept the honours. Are you playing humble handmaid? What an old organ-tune that is! Well? Give me reasons.'
'I do not wish to marry.'
'He's the great match of the county!'
'I cannot marry him.'
'Why, you are at the church door with him! Cannot marry him?'
'It does not bind me.'
'The church door is as binding as the altar to an honourable girl. What have you been about? Since I am in for confidences, half ones won't do. We must have honourable young women as well as men of honour. You can't imagine he is to be thrown over now, at this hour? What have you against him? come!'
'I have found that I do not…'
'What?'
'Love him.'
Mrs. Mountstuart grimaced transiently. 'That is no answer. The cause!' she said. 'What has he done?'
'Nothing.'
'And when did you discover this nothing?'
'By degrees: unknown to myself; suddenly.'
'Suddenly and by degrees? I suppose it's useless to ask for a head. But if all this is true, you ought not to be here.'
'I wish to go; I am unable.'
'Have you had a scene together?'
'I have expressed my wish.'
'In roundabout? — girl's English?'
'Quite clearly; oh, very clearly.'
'Have you spoken to your father?'
'I have.'
'And what does Dr. Middleton say?'
'It is incredible to him.'
'To me too! I can understand little differences, little whims, caprices: we don't settle into harness for a tap on the shoulder as a man becomes a knight: but to break and bounce away from an unhappy gentleman at the church door is either madness or it's one of the things without a name. You think you are quite sure of yourself?'
'I am so sure, that I look back with regret on the time when I was not.'
'But you were in love with him.'
'I was mistaken.'
'No love?'
'I have none to give.'
'Dear me! — Yes, yes, but that tone of sorrowful conviction is often a trick, it's not new: and I know that assumption of plain sense to pass off a monstrosity.' Mrs. Mountstuart struck her lap. 'Soh! but I've had to rack my brain for it: feminine disgust? You have been hearing imputations of his past life? moral character? No? Circumstances might make him behave unkindly, not unhandsomely: and we have no claim over a man's past, or it's too late to assert it. What is the case?'
'We are quite divided.'
'Nothing in the way of… nothing green-eyed?'
'Far from that!'
'Then name it.'
'We disagree.'
'Many a very good agreement is founded on disagreeing. It's to be regretted that you are not portionless. If you had been, you would have made very little of disagreeing. You are just as much bound in honour as if you had the ring on your finger.'
'In honour! But I appeal to his, I am no wife for him.'
'But if he insists, you consent?'
'I appeal to reason. Is it, madam…'
'But, I say, if he insists, you consent?'
'He will insist upon his own misery as well as mine.'
Mrs. Mountstuart rocked herself 'My poor Sir Willoughby! What a fate! — And I took you for a clever girl! Why, I have been admiring your management of him! And here am I bound to take a lesson from Lady Busshe. My dear good Middleton, don't let it be said that Lady Busshe saw deeper than I! I put some little vanity in it, I own: I won't conceal it. She declares that when she sent her present — I don't believe her — she had a premonition that it would come back. Surely you won't justify the extravagances of a woman without common reverence: — for anatomize him as we please to ourselves, he is a splendid man (and I did it chiefly to encourage and come at you). We don't often behold such a lordly-looking man: so conversable too when he feels at home; a picture of an English gentleman! The very man we want married for our neighbourhood! A woman who can openly talk of expecting him to be twice jilted! You shrink. It is repulsive. It would be incomprehensible: except, of course, to Lady Busshe, who
