When he was gone, Mrs. Hittaway opened her mind to her mother altogether. “The truth is, mamma, that Frederic will marry her.”
“But why? I thought that he had declared that he would give it up. I thought that he had said so to herself.”
“What of that, if he retracts what he said? He is so weak. Lady Glencora Palliser has made him promise to go and see her; and he is to go today. He is there now, probably—at this very moment. If he had been firm, the thing was done. After all that has taken place, nobody would ever have supposed that his engagement need go for anything. But what can he say to her now that he is with her, except just do the mischief all over again? I call it quite wicked in that woman’s interfering. I do, indeed! She’s a nasty, insolent, impertinent creature;—that’s what she is! After all the trouble I’ve taken, she comes and undoes it all with one word.”
“What can we do, Clara?”
“Well;—I do believe that if Frederic could be made to act as he ought to do, just for a while, she would marry her cousin, Mr. Greystock, and then there would be an end of it altogether. I really think that she likes him best, and from all that I can hear, she would take him now, if Frederic would only keep out of the way. As for him, of course he is doing his very best to get her. He has not one shilling to rub against another, and is over head and ears in debt.”
“Poor Lucy!” ejaculated Lady Fawn.
“Well;—yes; but really that is a matter of course. I always thought, mamma, that you and Amelia were a little wrong to coax her up in that belief.”
“But, my dear, the man proposed for her in the plainest possible manner. I saw his letter.”
“No doubt;—men do propose. We all know that. I’m sure I don’t know what they get by it, but I suppose it amuses them. There used to be a sort of feeling that if a man behaved badly something would be done to him; but that’s all over now. A man may propose to whom he likes, and if he chooses to say afterwards that it doesn’t mean anything, there’s nothing in the world to bring him to book.”
“That’s very hard,” said the elder lady, of whom everybody said that she did not understand the world as well as her daughter.
“The girls—they all know that it is so, and I suppose it comes to the same thing in the long run. The men have to marry, and what one girl loses another girl gets.”
“It will kill Lucy.”
“Girls ain’t killed so easy, mamma;—not nowadays. Saying that it will kill her won’t change the man’s nature. It wasn’t to be expected that such a man as Frank Greystock, in debt, and in Parliament, and going to all the best houses, should marry your governess. What was he to get by it? That’s what I want to know.”
“I suppose he loved her.”
“Laws, mamma, how antediluvian you are! No doubt he did like her—after his fashion; though what he saw in her, I never could tell. I think Miss Morris would make a very nice wife for a country clergyman who didn’t care how poor things were. But she has no style;—and as far as I can see, she has no beauty. Why should such a man as Frank Greystock tie himself by the leg forever to such a girl as that? But, mamma, he doesn’t mean to marry Lucy Morris. Would he have been going on in that way with his cousin down in Scotland had he meant it? He means nothing of the kind. He means to marry Lady Eustace’s income if he can get it;—and she would marry him before the summer if only we could keep Frederic away from her.”
Mrs. Hittaway demanded from her mother that in season and out of season she should be urgent with Lord Fawn, impressing upon him the necessity of waiting, in order that he might see how false Lady Eustace was to him; and also that she should teach Lucy Morris how vain were all her hopes. If Lucy Morris would withdraw her claims altogether the thing might probably be more quickly and more surely managed. If Lucy could be induced to tell Frank that she withdrew her claim, and that she saw how impossible it was that they should ever be man and wife, then—so argued Mrs. Hittaway—Frank would at once throw himself at his cousin’s feet, and all the difficulty would be over. The abominable, unjustifiable, and insolent interference of Lady Glencora just at the present moment would be the means of undoing all the good that had been done, unless it could be neutralised by some such activity as this. The necklace had absolutely faded away into nothing. The sly creature was almost becoming a heroine on the strength of the necklace. The very mystery with which the robberies were pervaded was acting in her favour. Lord Fawn would absolutely be made to marry her—forced into it by Lady Glencora and that set—unless the love affair between her and her
