“In what way am I unfair?”
“You come here and abuse all my friends, and tell me to go here and go there, just as though I were a child. And—and—and—”
“And what, Lizzie?”
“You know what I mean. You are one thing one day, and one another. I hope Miss Lucy Morris was quite well when you last heard from her.”
“You have no right to speak to me of Lucy—at least, not in disparagement.”
“You are treating her very badly;—you know that.”
“I am.”
“Then why don’t you give it up? Why don’t you let her have her chances—to do what she can with them? You know very well that you can’t marry her. You know that you ought not to have asked her. You talk of Miss Roanoke and Sir Griffin Tewett. There are people quite as bad as Sir Griffin—or Mrs. Carbuncle either. Don’t suppose I am speaking for myself. I’ve given up all that idle fancy long ago. I shall never marry a second time myself. I have made up my mind to that. I have suffered too much already.” Then she burst into tears.
He dried her tears and comforted her, and forgave all the injurious things she had said of him. It is almost impossible for a man—a man under forty and unmarried, and who is not a philosopher—to have familiar and affectionate intercourse with a beautiful young woman, and carry it on as he might do with a friend of the other sex. In his very heart Greystock despised this woman; he had told himself over and over again that were there no Lucy in the case he would not marry her; that she was affected, unreal—and, in fact, a liar in every word and look and motion which came from her with premeditation. Judging, not from her own account, but from circumstances as he saw them and such evidence as had reached him, he did not condemn her in reference to the diamonds. He had never for a moment conceived that she had secreted them. He acquitted her altogether from those special charges which had been widely circulated against her; but, nevertheless, he knew her to be heartless and bad. He had told himself a dozen times that it would be well for him that she should be married and taken out of his hands. And yet he loved her after a fashion, and was prone to sit near her, and was fool enough to be flattered by her caresses. When she would lay her hand on his arm, a thrill of pleasure went through him. And yet he would willingly have seen any decent man take her and marry her, making a bargain that he should never see her again. Young or old, men are apt to become Merlins when they encounter Viviens. On this occasion he left her, disgusted indeed, but not having told her that he was disgusted. “Come again, Frank, tomorrow, won’t you?” she said. He made her no promise as he went, nor had she expected it. He had left her quite abruptly the other day, and he now went away almost in the same fashion. But she was not surprised. She understood that the task she had in hand was one very difficult to be accomplished—and she did perceive, in some dark way, that, good as her acting was, it was not quite good enough. Lucy held her ground because she was real. You may knock about a diamond, and not even scratch it; whereas paste in rough usage betrays itself. Lizzie, with all her self-assuring protestations, knew that she was paste, and knew that Lucy was real stone. Why could she not force herself to act a little better, so that the paste might be as good as the stone—might at least seem to be as good? “If he despises me now, what will he say when he finds it all out?” she asked herself.
As for Frank Greystock himself, though he had quite made up his mind about Lizzie Eustace, he was still in doubt about the other girl. At the present moment he was making over two thousand pounds a year, and yet was more in debt now than he had been a year ago. When he attempted to look at his affairs, he could not even remember what had become of his money. He did not gamble. He had no little yacht, costing him about six hundred a year. He kept one horse in London, and one only. He had no house. And when he could spare time from his work, he was generally entertained at the
