“How is anybody who has got it to know if anybody cares for him?”
“You must find that out. There is such a thing I suppose as real sympathy.”
“You tell me to my face that you and Tregear would have been lovers only that you are both poor.”
“I never said anything of the kind.”
“And that he is to be passed on to my sister because it is supposed that she will have some money.”
“You are putting words into my mouth which I never spoke, and ideas into my mind which I never thought.”
“And of course I feel the same about myself. How can a fellow help it? I wish you had a lot of money, I know.”
“It is very kind of you;—but why?”
“Well;—I can’t explain myself,” he said, blushing as was his wont. “I daresay it wouldn’t make any difference.”
“It would make a great difference to me. As it is, having none, and knowing as I do that papa and Percival are getting things into a worse mess every day, I am obliged to hope that I may some day marry a man who has got an income.”
“I suppose so,” said he, still blushing, but frowning at the same time.
“You see I can be very frank with a real friend. But I am sure of myself in this—that I will never marry a man I do not love. A girl needn’t love a man unless she likes it, I suppose. She doesn’t tumble into love as she does into the fire. It would not suit me to marry a poor man, and so I don’t mean to fall in love with a poor man.”
“But you do mean to fall in love with a rich one?”
“That remains to be seen, Lord Silverbridge. The rich man will at any rate have to fall in love with me first. If you know of anyone you need not tell him to be too sure because he has a good income.”
“There’s Popplecourt. He’s his own master, and, fool as he is, he knows how to keep his money.”
“I don’t want a fool. You must do better for me than Lord Popplecourt.”
“What do you say to Dolly Longstaff?”
“He would be just the man, only he never would take the trouble to come out and be married.”
“Or Glasslough?”
“I’m afraid he is cross, and wouldn’t let me have my own way.”
“I can only think of one other;—but you would not take him.”
“Then you had better not mention him. It is no good crowding the list with impossibles.”
“I was thinking of—myself.”
“You are certainly one of the impossibles.”
“Why, Lady Mab?”
“For twenty reasons. You are too young, and you are bound to oblige your father, and you are to be wedded to Parliament—at any rate for the next ten years. And altogether it wouldn’t do—for a great many reasons.”
“I suppose you don’t like me well enough?”
“What a question to ask! No; my Lord, I do not. There; that’s what you may call an answer. Don’t you pretend to look offended, because if you do, I shall laugh at you. If you may have your joke surely I may have mine.”
“I don’t see any joke in it.”
“But I do. Suppose I were to say the other thing. Oh, Lord Silverbridge, you do me so much honour! And now I come to think about it, there is no one in the world I am so fond of as you. Would that suit you?”
“Exactly.”
“But it wouldn’t suit me. There’s papa. Don’t run away.”
“It’s ever so much past five,” said the legislator, “and I had intended to be in the House more than an hour ago. Goodbye. Give my love to Miss Cassewary.”
“Certainly. Miss Cassewary is your most devoted friend. Won’t you bring your sister to see me some day?”
“When she is in town I will.”
“I should so like to know her. Goodbye.”
As he hurried down to the House in a hansom he thought over it all, and told himself that he feared it would not do. She might perhaps accept him, but if so, she would do it simply in order that she might become Duchess of Omnium. She might, he thought, have accepted him then, had she chosen. He had spoken plainly enough. But she had laughed at him. He felt that if she loved him, there ought to have been something of that feminine tremor, of that doubting, hesitating half-avowal of which he had perhaps read in novels, and which his own instincts taught him to desire. But there had been no tremor nor hesitating. “No; my Lord, I do not,” she had said when he asked her to her face whether she liked him well enough to be his wife. “No; my Lord, I do not.” It was not the refusal conveyed in these words which annoyed him. He did believe that if he were to press his suit with the usual forms she would accept him. But it was that there should be such a total absence of trepidation in her words and manner. Before her he blushed and hesitated and felt that he did not know how to express himself. If she would only have done the same, then there would have been an equality. Then he could have seized her in his arms and sworn that never, never, never would he care for anyone but her.
In truth he saw everything as it was only too truly. Though she might choose to marry him if he pressed his request, she would never subject herself to him as he would have the girl do whom he loved. She was his superior, and in every word uttered between them showed that it was so. But yet how beautiful she was;—how much more beautiful than any other thing he had ever seen!
He sat on one of the high seats behind Sir Timothy Beeswax and Sir Orlando Drought, listening, or pretending to listen, to the speeches of three or four gentlemen respecting sugar, thinking of all this till half-past
