“If I thought so, I wouldn’t marry him,” said Lucy.
“Frank Greystock will understand you,” said Lizzie. It was indeed true that Lucy did understand something of her wealthy friend’s character, and was almost ashamed of the friendship. With Lizzie Greystock she had never sympathised, and Lizzie Eustace had always been distasteful to her. She already felt that the less she should see of Lizzie Fawn the better she should like it.
Before an hour was over, Frank Greystock was walking round the shrubberies with Lucy—and was walking with Lucy alone. It was undoubtedly the fact that Lady Eustace had contrived that it should be so. The unfitness of the thing recommended it to her. Frank could hardly marry a wife without a shilling. Lucy would certainly not think at all of shillings. Frank—as Lizzie knew—had been almost at her feet within the last fortnight, and might, in some possible emergency, be there again. In the midst of such circumstances nothing could be better than that Frank and Lucy should be thrown together. Lizzie regarded all this as romance. Poor Lady Fawn, had she known it all, would have called it diabolical wickedness and inhuman cruelty.
“Well, Lucy;—what do you think of it?” Frank Greystock said to her.
“Think of what, Mr. Greystock?”
“You know what I mean;—this marriage?”
“How should I be able to think? I have never seen them together. I suppose Lord Fawn isn’t very rich. She is rich. And then she is very beautiful. Don’t you think her very beautiful?”
“Sometimes exquisitely lovely.”
“Everybody says so;—and I am sure it is the fact. Do you know;—but perhaps you’ll think I am envious.”
“If I thought you envious of Lizzie, I should have to think you very foolish at the same time.”
“I don’t know what that means;”—she did know well enough what it meant;—“but sometimes to me she is almost frightful to look at.”
“In what way?”
“Oh, I can’t tell you. She looks like a beautiful animal that you are afraid to caress for fear it should bite you;—an animal that would be beautiful if its eyes were not so restless, and its teeth so sharp and so white.”
“How very odd.”
“Why odd, Mr. Greystock?”
“Because I feel exactly in the same way about her. I am not in the least afraid that she’ll bite me; and as for caressing the animal—that kind of caressing which you mean—it seems to me to be just what she’s made for. But, I do feel sometimes, that she is like a cat.”
“Something not quite so tame as a cat,” said Lucy.
“Nevertheless she is very lovely—and very clever. Sometimes I think her the most beautiful woman I ever saw in the world.”
“Do you, indeed?”
“She will be immensely run after as Lady Fawn. When she pleases she can make her own house quite charming. I never knew a woman who could say pretty things to so many people at once.”
“You are making her out to be a paragon of perfection, Mr. Greystock.”
“And when you add to all the rest that she has four thousand a year, you must admit that Lord Fawn is a lucky man.”
“I have said nothing against it.”
“Four thousand a year is a very great consideration, Lucy.” Lucy for a while said nothing. She was making up her mind that she would say nothing;—that she would make no reply indicative of any feeling on her part. But she was not sufficiently strong to keep her resolution. “I wonder, Mr. Greystock,” she said, “that you did not attempt to win the great prize yourself. Cousins do marry.”
He had thought of attempting it, and at this moment he would not lie to her. “The cousinship had nothing to do with it,” he said.
“Perhaps you did think of it.”
“I did, Lucy. Yes, I did. Thank God, I only thought of it.” She could not refrain herself from looking up into his face and clasping her hands together. A woman never so dearly loves a man as when he confesses that he has been on the brink of a great crime—but has refrained, and has not committed it. “I did think of it. I am not telling you that she would have taken me. I have no reason whatever for thinking so.”
“I am sure she would,” said Lucy, who did not in the least know what words she was uttering.
“It would have been simply for her money—her money and her beauty. It would not have been because I love her.”
“Never—never ask a girl to marry you, unless you love her, Mr. Greystock.”
“Then there is only one that I can ever ask,” said he. There was nothing of course that she could say to this. If he did not choose to go further, she was not bound to understand him. But would he go further? She felt at the moment that an open declaration of his love to herself would make her happy forever, even though it should be accompanied by an assurance that he could not marry her. If they only knew each other—that it was so between them—that, she thought, would be enough for her. And as for him—if a woman could bear such a position, surely he might bear it. “Do you know who that one is?” he asked.
“No,” she said—shaking her head.
“Lucy, is that true?”
“What does it matter?”
“Lucy;—look at me, Lucy,” and he put his hand upon her arm.
“No—no—no!” she said.
“I love you so well, Lucy, that I never can love another. I have thought of many women, but could never even think of one, as
