“Of course that is the proper thing to say, Harry.”
“I won’t stand that from you, Lady Ongar. What I say, I mean; and no one knows that better than you.”
“Won’t you, Harry? From whom, then, if not from me? But come, I will do you justice, and believe you to be simple enough to wish anything of the kind. The sort of castle in the air which you build, is not one to be had by inheritance, but to be taken by storm. You must fight for it.”
“Or work for it.”
“Or win it in some way off your own bat; and no lord ever sat prouder in his castle than you sit in those that you build from day to day in your imagination. And you sally forth and do all manner of magnificent deeds. You help distressed damsels—poor me, for instance; and you attack enormous dragons;—shall I say that Sophie Gordeloup is the latest dragon?—and you wish well to your enemies, such as Hugh and Archie; and you cut down enormous forests, which means your coming miracles as an engineer;—and then you fall gloriously in love. When is that last to be, Harry?”
“I suppose, according to all precedent, that must be done with the distressed damsel,” he said—fool that he was.
“No, Harry, no; you shall take your young fresh generous heart to a better market than that; not but that the distressed damsel will ever remember what might once have been.”
He knew that he was playing on the edge of a precipice—that he was fluttering as a moth round a candle. He knew that it behoved him now at once to tell her all his tale as to Stratton and Florence Burton;—that if he could tell it now, the pang would be over and the danger gone. But he did not tell it. Instead of telling it he thought of Lady Ongar’s beauty, of his own early love, of what might have been his had he not gone to Stratton. I think he thought, if not of her wealth, yet of the power and place which would have been his were it now open to him to ask her for her hand. When he had declared that he did not want his cousin’s inheritance, he had spoken the simple truth. He was not covetous of another’s money. Were Archie to marry as many wives as Henry, and have as many children as Priam, it would be no offence to him. His desires did not lie in that line. But in this other case, the woman before him who would so willingly have endowed him with all that she possessed, had been loved by him before he had ever seen Florence Burton. In all his love for Florence—so he now told himself, but so told himself falsely—he had ever remembered that Julia Brabazon had been his first love, the love whom he had loved with all his heart. But things had gone with him most unfortunately—with a misfortune that had never been paralleled. It was thus he was thinking instead of remembering that now was the time in which his tale should be told.
Lady Ongar, however, soon carried him away from the actual brink of the precipice. “But how about the dragon,” said she, “or rather about the dragon’s brother, at whom you were bound to go and tilt on my behalf? Have you tilted, or are you a recreant knight?”
“I have tilted,” said he, “but the he-dragon professes that he will not regard himself as killed. In other words he declares that he will see you.”
“That he will see me?” said Lady Ongar, and as she spoke there came an angry spot on each cheek. “Does he send me that message as a threat?”
“He does not send it as a threat, but I think he partly means it so.”
“He will find, Harry, that I will not see him; and that should he force himself into my presence, I shall know how to punish such an outrage. If he sent me any message, let me know it.”
“To tell the truth he was most unwilling to speak to me at all, though he was anxious to be civil to me. When I had inquired for him some time in vain, he came to me with another man, and asked me to dinner. So I went, and as there were four of us, of course I could not speak to him then. He still had the other man, a foreigner—”
“Colonel Schmoff, perhaps?”
“Yes; Colonel Schmoff. He kept Colonel Schmoff by him, so as to guard him from being questioned.”
“That is so like him. Everything he does he does with some design—with some little plan. Well, Harry, you might have ignored Colonel Schmoff for what I should have cared.”
“I got the count to come out into another room at last, and then he was very angry—with me, you know—and talked of what he would do to men who interfered with him.”
“You will not quarrel with him, Harry? Promise me that there shall be no nonsense of that sort—no fighting.”
“Oh, no; we were friends again very soon. But he bade me tell you that there was something important for him to say and for you to hear, which was no concern of mine, and which required an interview.”
“I do not believe him, Harry.”
“And he said that he had once been very courteous to you—”
“Yes; once insolent—and once courteous. I have forgiven the one for the other.”
“He then went on to say that you made him a poor return for his civility by shutting your door in his face, but that he did not doubt you would think better of it when you had heard his message. Therefore, he said, he should call again. That, Lady Ongar, was the whole of it.”
“Shall I tell you what his intention was, Harry?” Again her face became red as she asked this question; but the colour which now came to her cheeks was rather
