After this Lady Cantrip did not insist on the interview. She expressed her regret that things should be as they were—explained in sweetly innocent phrases that in a certain rank of life young ladies could not always marry the gentlemen to whom their fancies might attach them, but must, not unfrequently, postpone their youthful inclinations to the will of their elders—or in less delicate language, that though they might love in one direction they must marry in another; and then expressed a hope that her dear Mary would think over these things and try to please her father. “Why does he not try to please me?” said Mary. Then Lady Cantrip was obliged to see Lord Popplecourt, a necessity which was a great nuisance to her. “Yes;—she understands what you mean. But she is not prepared for it yet. You must wait awhile.”
“I don’t see why I am to wait.”
“She is very young—and so are you, indeed. There is plenty of time.”
“There is somebody else I suppose.”
“I told you,” said Lady Cantrip, in her softest voice, “that there has been a dream across her path.”
“It’s that Tregear!”
“I am not prepared to mention names,” said Lady Cantrip, astonished that he should know so much. “But indeed you must wait.”
“I don’t see it, Lady Cantrip.”
“What can I say more? If you think that such a girl as Lady Mary Palliser, the daughter of the Duke of Omnium, possessed of fortune, beauty, and every good gift, is to come like a bird to your call, you will find yourself mistaken. All that her friends can do for you will be done. The rest must remain with yourself.” During that evening Lord Popplecourt endeavoured to make himself pleasant to one of the FitzHoward young ladies, and on the next morning he took his leave of Custins.
“I will never interfere again in reference to anybody else’s child as long as I live,” Lady Cantrip said to her husband that night.
Lady Mary was very much tempted to open her heart to Miss Boncassen. It would be delightful to her to have a friend; but were she to engage Miss Boncassen’s sympathies on her behalf, she must of course sympathise with Miss Boncassen in return. And what if, after all, Silverbridge were not devoted to the American beauty! What if it should turn out that he was going to marry Lady Mabel Grex! “I wish you would call me Isabel,” her friend said to her. “It is so odd—since I have left New York I have never heard my name from any lips except father’s and mother’s.”
“Has not Silverbridge ever called you by your Christian name?”
“I think not. I am sure he never has.” But he had, though it had passed by her at the moment without attention. “It all came from him so suddenly. And yet I expected it. But it was too sudden for Christian names and pretty talk. I do not even know what his name is.”
“Plantagenet;—but we always call him Silverbridge.”
“Plantagenet is very much prettier. I shall always call him Plantagenet. But I recall that. You will not remember that against me?”
“I will remember nothing that you do not wish.”
“I mean that if—if all the grandeurs of all the Pallisers could consent to put up with poor me, if heaven were opened to me with a straight gate, so that I could walk out of our republic into your aristocracy with my head erect, with the stars and stripes waving proudly round me till I had been accepted into the shelter of the Omnium griffins—then I would call him—”
“There’s one Palliser would welcome you.”
“Would you, dear? Then I will love you so dearly. May I call you Mary?”
“Of course you may.”
“Mary is the prettiest name under the sun. But Plantagenet is so grand! Which of the kings did you branch off from?”
“I know nothing about it. From none of them, I should think. There is some story about a Sir Guy who was a king’s friend. I never trouble myself about it. I hate aristocracy.”
“Do you, dear?”
“Yes,” said Mary, full of her own grievances. “It is an abominable bondage, and I do not see that it does any good at all.”
“I think it is so glorious,” said the American. “There is no such mischievous nonsense in all the world as equality. That is what father says. What men ought to want is liberty.”
“It is terrible to be tied up in a small circle,” said the Duke’s daughter.
“What do you mean, Lady Mary?”
“I thought you were to call me Mary. What I mean is this. Suppose that Silverbridge loves you better than all the world.”
“I hope he does. I think he does.”
“And suppose he cannot marry you, because of his—aristocracy?”
“But he can.”
“I thought you were saying yourself—”
“Saying what? That he could not marry me! No, indeed! But that under certain circumstances I would not marry him. You don’t suppose that I think he would be disgraced? If so I would go away at once, and he should never again see my face or hear my voice. I think myself good enough for the best man God ever made. But if others think differently, and those others are so closely concerned with him, and would be so closely concerned with me, as to trouble our joint lives—then will I neither subject him to such sorrow nor will I encounter it myself.”
“It all comes from what you call aristocracy.”
“No, dear;—but from the prejudices of an aristocracy. To tell the truth, Mary, the more difficult a place is to get into, the more the right of going in is valued. If everybody could be a Duchess and a Palliser, I should not perhaps think so much about it.”
“I thought it was because you loved him.”
“So
