She knew that she was heartless herself, and that she belonged to a heartless world;—but she knew also that there was a world of women who were not heartless. Such women had looked down upon her as from a great height, but she in return had been able to ridicule them. They had chosen their part, and she had chosen hers—and had thought that she might climb to the glory of wealth and rank, while they would have to marry hardworking clergymen and briefless barristers. She had often been called upon to vindicate to herself the part she had chosen, and had always done so by magnifying in her own mind the sin of the men with whom she had to deal. At this moment she thought that Lord Rufford had treated her villainously, whereas her conduct to him had been only that which the necessity of the case required. To Lord Rufford she had simply behaved after the manner of her class, heartless of course, but only in the way which the “custom of the trade” justified. Each had tried to circumvent the other, and she as the weaker had gone to the wall. But John Morton had believed in her and loved her. Oh, how she wished that she had deserted her class, and clung to him—even though she should now have been his widow. The legacy was a burden to her. Even she had conscience enough to be sorry for a day or two that he had named her in his will.
And what would she do with herself for the future? Her quarrel with her mother had been very serious, each swearing that under no circumstances would she again consent to live with the other. The daughter of course knew that the mother would receive her again should she ask to be received. But in such case she must go back with shortened pinions and blunted beak. Her sojourn with Mrs. Green was to last for one month, and at the end of that time she must seek for a home. If she put John Morton’s legacy out to interest, she would now be mistress of a small income;—but she understood money well enough to know to what obduracy of poverty she would thus be subjected. As she looked the matter closer in the face the horrors became more startling and more manifest. Who would have her in their houses? Where should she find society—where the possibility of lovers? What would be her life, and what her prospects? Must she give up forever the game for which she had lived, and own that she had been conquered in the fight and beaten even to death? Then she thought over the long list of her past lovers, trying to see whether there might be one of the least desirable at whom she might again cast her javelins. But there was not one.
The tender messages from Mounser Green came to her day by day. Mounser Green, as the nephew of her hostess, had been very kind to her; but hitherto he had never appeared to her in the light of a possible lover. He was a clerk in the Foreign Office, waiting for his aunt’s money;—a man whom she had met in society and whom she knew to be well thought of by those above him in wealth and rank; but she had never regarded him as prey—or as a man whom any girl would want to marry. He was one of those of the other sex who would most probably look out for prey—who, if he married at all, would marry an heiress. She, in her time, had been on good terms with many such a one—had counted them among her intimate friends, had made use of them and been useful to them—but she had never dreamed of marrying any one of them. They were there in society for altogether a different purpose. She had not hesitated to talk to Mounser Green about Lord Rufford—and though she had pretended to make a secret of the place to which she was going when he had taken her to the railway, she had not at all objected to his understanding her purpose. Up to that moment there had certainly been no thought on her part of transferring what she was wont to call her affections to Mounser Green as a suitor.
But as she lay in bed, thinking of her future life, tidings were brought to her by Mrs. Green that Mounser had accepted the mission to Patagonia. Could it be that her destiny intended her to go out to Patagonia as the wife, if not of one minister, then of another? There would be a career—a way of living, if not exactly that which she would have chosen. Of Patagonia, as a place of residence, she had already formed ideas. In some of those moments in which she had foreseen that Lord Rufford would be lost to her, she had told herself that it would be better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. Among Patagonian women she would probably be the first. Among English ladies it did not seem that at present she had prospect of a high place. It would be long before Lord Rufford would be forgotten—and she had not space enough before her for forgettings which would require time for their accomplishment. Mounser Green had declared with
