“Caroline,” said the stern monitress, “you are already learning to laugh at principles which have been dear to you since you left your mother’s breast. Alas, how true it is, ‘You cannot touch pitch and not be defiled.’ ”
The further progress of these friendly and feminine amenities was stopped by the presence of the gentleman who had occasioned them. “Miss Petrie,” said the hero of the hour, “Caroline was to tell you of my good fortune, and no doubt she has done so.”
“I cannot wait to hear the pretty things he has to say,” said Caroline, “and I must look after my aunt’s guests. There is poor Signor Buonarosci without a soul to say a syllable to him, and I must go and use my ten Italian words.”
“You are about to take with you to your old country, Mr. Glascock,” said Miss Petrie, “one of the brightest stars in our young American firmament.” There could be no doubt, from the tone of Miss Petrie’s voice, that she now regarded this star, however bright, as one of a sort which is subjected to falling.
“I am going to take a very nice young woman,” said Mr. Glascock.
“I hate that word woman, sir, uttered with the half-hidden sneer which always accompanies its expression from the mouth of a man.”
“Sneer, Miss Petrie!”
“I quite allow that it is involuntary, and not analysed or understood by yourselves. If you speak of a dog, you intend to do so with affection, but there is always contempt mixed with it. The so-called chivalry of man to woman is all begotten in the same spirit. I want no favour, but I claim to be your equal.”
“I thought that American ladies were generally somewhat exacting as to those privileges which chivalry gives them.”
“It is true, sir, that the only rank we know in our country is in that precedence which man gives to woman. Whether we maintain that, or whether we abandon it, we do not intend to purchase it at the price of an acknowledgment of intellectual inferiority. For myself, I hate chivalry;—what you call chivalry. I can carry my own chair, and I claim the right to carry it whithersoever I may please.”
Mr. Glascock remained with her for some time, but made no opportunity for giving that invitation to Monkhams of which Caroline had spoken. As he said afterwards, he found it impossible to expect her to attend to any subject so trivial; and when, afterwards, Caroline told him, with some slight mirth—the capability of which on such a subject was coming to her with her new ideas of life—that, though he was partly saved as a man and a brother, still he was partly the reverse as a feudal lord, he began to reflect that Wallachia Petrie would be a guest with whom he would find it very difficult to make things go pleasant at Monkhams. “Does she not bully you horribly?” he asked.
“Of course she bullies me,” Caroline answered; “and I cannot expect you to understand as yet how it is that I love her and like her; but I do. If I were in distress tomorrow, she would give everything she has in the world to put me right.”
“So would I,” said he.
“Ah, you;—that is a matter of course. That is your business now. And she would give everything she has in the world to set the world right. Would you do that?”
“It would depend on the amount of my faith. If I could believe in the result, I suppose I should do it.”
“She would do it on the slightest hope that such giving would have any tendency that way. Her philanthropy is all real. Of course she is a bore to you.”
“I am very patient.”
“I hope I shall find you so—always. And, of course, she is ridiculous—in your eyes. I have learned to see it, and to regret it; but I shall never cease to love her.”
“I have not the slightest objection. Her lessons will come from over the water, and mine will come from—where shall I say?—over the table. If I can’t talk her down with so much advantage on my side, I ought to be made a woman’s-right man myself.”
Poor Lady Rowley had watched Miss Petrie and Mr. Glascock during those moments that they had been together, and had half believed the rumour, and had half doubted, thinking in the moments of her belief that Mr. Glascock must be mad, and in the moments of unbelief that the rumours had been set afloat by the English Minister’s wife with the express intention of turning Mr. Glascock into ridicule. It had never occurred to her to doubt that Wallachia was the eldest of that family of nieces. Could it be possible that a man who had known her Nora, who had undoubtedly loved her Nora—who had travelled all the way from London to Nuncombe Putney to ask Nora to be his wife—should within twelve months of that time have resolved to marry a woman whom he must have selected simply as being the most opposite to Nora of any female human being that he could find? It was not credible to her; and if it were not true, there might still be a hope. Nora had met him, and had spoken to him, and it had seemed that for a moment or two they had spoken as friends. Lady Rowley, when talking to Mrs. Spalding, had watched them closely; and she had seen that Nora’s eyes had been bright, and that there had been something between them which was pleasant. Suddenly she found herself close to Wallachia, and thought that she would trust herself to a word.
“Have you been long in Florence?” asked Lady Rowley in her softest voice.
“A pretty considerable time, ma’am;—that is, since the fall began.”
What a voice;—what an accent;—and what words! Was there a man living with sufficient courage to take this woman to England, and
