“And yet somebody must be first, if the thing is ever to be done;—and I am too old to wait on the chance of being the second.”
She felt that at the rate she was now progressing she would only run from one little suggestion to another, and that he, either wilfully or in sheer simplicity, would take such suggestions simply as jokes; and she was aware that she lacked the skill to bring the conversation round gradually to the point which she was bound to reach. She must make another dash, let it be ever so sudden. Her mode of doing so would be crude, ugly—almost vulgar she feared; but she would attain her object and say what she had to say. When once she had warmed herself with the heat which argument would produce, then, she was pretty sure, she would find herself at least as strong as he. “I don’t know that the thing ought to be done at all,” she said. During the last moment or two he had put his arm round her waist; and she, not choosing to bid him desist from embracing her, but unwilling in her present mood to be embraced, got up and stood before him. “I have thought, and thought, and thought, and feel that it should not be done. In marriage, like should go to like.” She despised herself for using Wallachia’s words, but they fitted in so usefully, that she could not refrain from them. “I was wrong not to know it before, but it is better to know it now, than not to have known it till too late. Everything that I hear and see tells me that it would be so. If you were simply an Englishman, I would go anywhere with you; but I am not fit to be the wife of an English lord. The time would come when I should be a disgrace to you, and then I should die.”
“I think I should go near dying myself,” said he, “if you were a disgrace to me.” He had not risen from his chair, and sat calmly looking up into her face.
“We have made a mistake, and let us unmake it,” she continued. “I will always be your friend. I will correspond with you. I will come and see your wife.”
“That will be very kind!”
“Charles, if you laugh at me, I shall be angry with you. It is right that you should look to your future life, as it is right that I should do so also. Do you think that I am joking? Do you suppose that I do not mean it?”
“You have taken an extra dose this morning of Wallachia Petrie, and of course you mean it.”
“If you think that I am speaking her mind and not my own, you do not know me.”
“And what is it you propose?” he said, still keeping his seat and looking calmly up into her face.
“Simply that our engagement should be over.”
“And why?”
“Because it is not a fitting one for you to have made. I did not understand it before, but now I do. It will not be good for you to marry an American girl. It will not add to your happiness, and may destroy it. I have learned, at last, to know how much higher is your position than mine.”
“And I am to be supposed to know nothing about it?”
“Your fault is only this—that you have been too generous. I can be generous also.”
“Now, look here, Caroline, you must not be angry with me if on such a subject I speak plainly. You must not even be angry if I laugh a little.”
“Pray do not laugh at me!—not now.”
“I must a little, Carry. Why am I to be supposed to be so ignorant of what concerns my own happiness and my own duties? If you will not sit down, I will get up, and we will take a turn together.” He rose from his seat, but they did not leave the covered terrace. They moved on to the extremity, and then he stood hemming her in against a marble table in the corner. “In making this rather wild proposition, have you considered me at all?”
“I have endeavoured to consider you, and you only.”
“And how have you done it? By the aid of some misty, farfetched ideas respecting English society, for which you have no basis except your own dreams—and by the fantasies of a rabid enthusiast.”
“She is not rabid,” said Caroline earnestly; “other people think just the same.”
“My dear, there is only one person whose thinking on this subject is of any avail, and I am that person. Of course, I can’t drag you into church to be married, but practically you can not help yourself from being taken there now. As there need be no question about our marriage—which is a thing as good as done—”
“It is not done at all,” said Caroline.
“I feel quite satisfied you will not jilt me, and as I shall insist on having the ceremony performed, I choose to regard it as a certainty. Passing that by, then, I will go on to the results. My uncles, and aunts, and cousins, and the people you talk of, were very reasonable folk when I last saw them, and quite sufficiently alive to the fact that they had to regard me as the head of their family. I do not doubt that we shall find them equally reasonable when we get home; but should they be changed, should there be any sign shown that my choice of a wife had occasioned displeasure—such displeasure would not affect you.”
“But it would affect you.”
“Not at all. In my own house I am master—and I mean to continue to be so. You will be mistress there, and the only fear touching such a position is that it may be recognised by others too strongly. You have nothing to fear, Carry.”
“It is of you I am thinking.”
“Nor have I. What if some old women, or
