“You know mine,” said Silverbridge.
“I will take it for granted that I do. Your mind is to marry me will ye nill ye, as the people say.” He answered this by merely nodding his head and getting a little nearer to her. “That is all very well in its way, and I am not going to say but what I am gratified.” Then he did grasp her hand. “If it pleases you to hear me say so, Lord Silverbridge—”
“Not Lord!”
“Then I shall call you Plantagenet;—only it sounds so horribly historical. Why are you not Thomas or Abraham? But if it will please you to hear me say so, I am ready to acknowledge that nothing in all my life ever came near to the delight I have in your love.” Hereupon he almost succeeded in getting his arm round her waist. But she was strong, and seized his hand and held it. “And I speak no rhapsodies. I tell you a truth which I want you to know and to keep in your heart—so that you may be always, always sure of it.”
“I never will doubt it.”
“But that marrying will ye nill ye, will not suit me. There is so much wanted for happiness in life.”
“I will do all that I can.”
“Yes. Even though it be hazardous, I am willing to trust you. If you were as other men are, if you could do as you please as lower men may do, I would leave father and mother and my own country—that I might be your wife. I would do that because I love you. But what will my life be here, if they who are your friends turn their backs upon me? What will your life be, if, through all that, you continue to love me?”
“That will all come right.”
“And what will your life be, or mine,” she said, going on with her own thoughts without seeming to have heard his last words, “if in such a condition as that you did not continue to love me?”
“I should always love you.”
“It might be very hard:—and if once felt to be hard, then impossible. You have not looked at it as I have done. Why should you? Even with a wife that was a trouble to you—”
“Oh, Isabel!”
His arm was now round her waist, but she continued speaking as though she were not aware of the embrace. “Yes, a trouble! I shall not be always just what I am now. Now I can be bright and pretty and hold my own with others because I am so. But are you sure—I am not—that I am such stuff as an English lady should be made of? If in ten years’ time you found that others did not think so—that, worse again, you did not think so yourself, would you be true to me then?”
“I will always be true to you.”
She gently extricated herself, as though she had done so that she might better turn round and look into his face. “Oh, my own one, who can say of himself that it would be so? How could it be so, when you would have all the world against you? You would still be what you are—with a clog round your leg while at home. In Parliament, among your friends, at your clubs, you would be just what you are. You would be that Lord Silverbridge who had all good things at his disposal—except that he had been unfortunate in his marriage! But what should I be?” Though she paused he could not answer her—not yet. There was a solemnity in her speech which made it necessary that he should hear her to the end. “I, too, have my friends in my own country. It is no disgrace to me there that my grandfather worked on the quays. No one holds her head higher than I do, or is more sure of being able to hold it. I have there that assurance of esteem and honour which you have here. I would lose it all to do you a good. But I will not lose it to do you an injury.”
“I don’t know about injuries,” he said, getting up and walking about the room. “But I am sure of this. You will have to be my wife.”
“If your father will take me by the hand and say that I shall be his daughter, I will risk all the rest. Even then it might not be wise; but we love each other too well not to run some peril. Do you think that I want anything better than to preside in your home, to soften your cares, to welcome your joys, to be the mother perhaps of your children, and to know that you are proud that I should be so? No, my darling. I can see a Paradise;—only, only, I may not be fit to enter it. I must use some judgment better than my own, sounder, dear, than yours. Tell the Duke what I say;—tell him with what language a son may use to his father. And remember that all you ask for yourself you will ask doubly for me.”
“I will ask him so that he cannot refuse me.”
“If you do I shall be contented. And now go. I have said ever so much, and I am tired.”
“Isabel! Oh, my love!”
“Yes; Isabel;—your love! I am that at any rate for the present—and proud to be so as a queen. Well, if it must be, this once—as I have been so hard to you.” Then she gave him her cheek to kiss, but of course he took more than she gave.
When he got out into the street it was dark and there was still standing the faithful cab. But he felt that at the present moment it would be impossible to sit still, and he dismissed the equipage. He walked rapidly along Brook Street into Park Lane, and from thence to the park, hardly
