“I have thought of it a good deal too. I have been thinking of it for six months at least.”
“There is so much against me.”
“What is there against you?”
“They say bad things of me in India.”
“I know all about that,” replied Mr. Broune.
“And Felix!”
“I think I may say that I know all about that also.”
“And then I have become so poor!”
“I am not proposing to myself to marry you for your money. Luckily for me—I hope luckily for both of us—it is not necessary that I should do so.”
“And then I seem so to have fallen through in everything. I don’t know what I’ve got to give to a man in return for all that you offer to give to me.”
“Yourself,” he said, stretching out his right hand to her. And there he sat with it stretched out—so that she found herself compelled to put her own into it, or to refuse to do so with very absolute words. Very slowly she put out her own, and gave it to him without looking at him. Then he drew her towards him, and in a moment she was kneeling at his feet, with her face buried on his knees. Considering their ages perhaps we must say that their attitude was awkward. They would certainly have thought so themselves had they imagined that anyone could have seen them. But how many absurdities of the kind are not only held to be pleasant, but almost holy—as long as they remain mysteries inspected by no profane eyes! It is not that Age is ashamed of feeling passion and acknowledging it—but that the display of it is, without the graces of which Youth is proud, and which Age regrets.
On that occasion there was very little more said between them. He had certainly been in earnest, and she had now accepted him. As he went down to his office he told himself now that he had done the best, not only for her but for himself also. And yet I think that she had won him more thoroughly by her former refusal than by any other virtue.
She, as she sat alone, late into the night, became subject to a thorough reaction of spirit. That morning the world had been a perfect blank to her. There was no single object of interest before her. Now everything was rose-coloured. This man who had thus bound her to him, who had given her such assured proofs of his affection and truth, was one of the considerable ones of the world; a man than whom few—so she now told herself—were greater or more powerful. Was it not a career enough for any woman to be the wife of such a man, to receive his friends, and to shine with his reflected glory?
Whether her hopes were realised, or—as human hopes never are realised—how far her content was assured, these pages cannot tell; but they must tell that, before the coming winter was over, Lady Carbury became the wife of Mr. Broune, and, in furtherance of her own resolve, took her husband’s name. The house in Welbeck Street was kept, and Mrs. Broune’s Tuesday evenings were much more regarded by the literary world than had been those of Lady Carbury.
C
Down in Suffolk
It need hardly be said that Paul Montague was not long in adjusting his affairs with Hetta after the visit which he received from Roger Carbury. Early on the following morning he was once more in Welbeck Street, taking the brooch with him; and though at first Lady Carbury kept up her opposition, she did it after so weak a fashion as to throw in fact very little difficulty in his way. Hetta understood perfectly that she was in this matter stronger than her mother and that she need fear nothing, now that Roger Carbury was on her side. “I don’t know what you mean to live on,” Lady Carbury said, threatening future evils in a plaintive tone. Hetta repeated, though in other language, the assurance which the young lady made who declared that if her future husband would consent to live on potatoes, she would be quite satisfied with the potato-peelings; while Paul made some vague allusion to the satisfactory nature of his final arrangements with the house of Fisker, Montague, and Montague. “I don’t see anything like an income,” said Lady Carbury; “but I suppose Roger will make it right. He takes everything upon himself now it seems.” But this was before the halcyon day of Mr. Broune’s second offer.
It was at any rate decided that they were to be married, and the time fixed for the marriage was to be the following spring. When this was finally arranged Roger Carbury, who had returned to his own home, conceived the idea that it would be well that Hetta should pass the autumn and if possible the winter also down in Suffolk, so that she might get used to him in the capacity which he now aspired to fill; and with that object he induced Mrs. Yeld, the Bishop’s wife, to invite her down to the palace. Hetta accepted the invitation and left London before she could hear the tidings of her mother’s engagement with Mr. Broune.
Roger Carbury had not yielded in this matter—had
