She dressed herself with considerable care—having first thought of receiving him in bed. But as the trial had now gone on without her, it would be convenient that her recovery should be commenced. So she had herself dressed in a white morning wrapper with pink bows, and allowed the curl to be made fit to hang over her shoulder. And she put on a pair of pretty slippers, with gilt bindings, and took a laced handkerchief and a volume of Shelley—and so she prepared herself to receive Mr. Emilius. Lizzie, since the reader first knew her, had begun to use a little colouring in the arrangement of her face, and now, in honour of her sickness, she was very pale indeed. But still, through the paleness, there was the faintest possible tinge of pink colour shining through the translucent pearl powder. Anyone who knew Lizzie would be sure that, when she did paint, she would paint well.
The conversation was at first, of course, confined to the lady’s health. She thought that she was, perhaps, getting better, though, as the doctor had told her, the reassuring symptoms might too probably only be too fallacious. She could eat nothing—literally nothing. A few grapes out of the hothouse had supported her for the last week. This statement was foolish on Lizzie’s part, as Mr. Emilius was a man of an inquiring nature, and there was not a grape in the garden. Her only delight was in reading and in her child’s society. Sometimes she thought that she would pass away with the boy in her arms and her favourite volume of Shelley in her hand. Mr. Emilius expressed a hope that she would not pass away yet, for ever so many years. “Oh, my friend,” said Lizzie, “what is life, that one should desire it?” Mr. Emilius of course reminded her that, though her life might be nothing to herself, it was very much indeed to those who loved her. “Yes;—to my boy,” said Lizzie. Mr. Emilius informed her, with confidence, that it was not only her boy that loved her. There were others;—or, at any rate, one other. She might be sure of one faithful heart, if she cared for that. Lizzie only smiled, and threw from her taper fingers a little paper pellet into the middle of the room—probably with the view of showing at what value she priced the heart of which Mr. Emilius was speaking.
The trial had occupied two days, Monday and Tuesday, and this was now the Wednesday. The result had been telegraphed to Mr. Emilius—of course without any record of the serjeant’s bitter speech—and the suitor now gave the news to his ladylove. Those two horrid men had at last been found guilty, and punished with all the severity of the law. “Poor fellows,” said Lady Eustace—“poor Mr. Benjamin! Those ill-starred jewels have been almost as unkind to him as to me.”
“He’ll never come back alive, of course,” said Mr. Emilius. “It’ll kill him.”
“And it will kill me too,” said Lizzie. “I have a something here which tells me that I shall never recover. Nobody will ever believe what I have suffered about those paltry diamonds. But he coveted them. I never coveted them, Mr. Emilius; though I clung to them because they were my darling husband’s last gift to me.” Mr. Emilius assured her that he quite understood the facts, and appreciated all her feelings.
And now, as he thought, had come the time for pressing his suit. With widows, he had been told, the wooing should be brisk. He had already once asked her to be his wife, and of course she knew the motive of his journey to Scotland. “Dearest Lady Eustace,” he said suddenly, “may I be allowed to renew the petition which I was once bold enough to make to you in London?”
“Petition!” exclaimed Lizzie.
“Ah yes; I can well understand that your indifference should enable you to forget it. Lady Eustace, I did venture to tell you—that—I loved you.”
“Mr. Emilius, so many men have told me that.”
“I can well believe it. Some have told you so, perhaps, from base, mercenary motives.”
“You are very complimentary, sir.”
“I shall never pay you any compliments, Lady Eustace. Whatever may be our future intercourse in life, you will only hear words of truth from my lips. Some have told you so from mercenary motives.”—Mr. Emilius repeated the words with severity, and then paused to hear whether she would dare to argue with him. As she was silent, he changed his voice, and went on with that sweet, oily tone which had made his fortune for him.—“Some, no doubt, have spoken from the inner depths of their hearts. But none, Lady Eustace, have spoken with such adamantine truth, with so intense an anxiety, with so personal a solicitude for your welfare in this world and the next, as that—or I should rather say those—which glow within this bosom.” Lizzie was certainly pleased by the manner in which he addressed her. She thought that a man ought to dare to speak out, and that on such an occasion as this he should venture to do so with some enthusiasm and some poetry. She considered that men generally were afraid of expressing themselves, and were as dumb as dogs from the want of becoming spirit. Mr. Emilius gesticulated, and struck his breast, and brought out his words as though he meant them.
“It is easy to say all that, Mr. Emilius,” she replied.
“The saying of it is hard enough, Lady Eustace. You can never know how hard it is to speak from a full heart. But to feel it, I will not say is easy;—only to me, not to feel it is
