“I hardly know whether I am or not,” said Frank—and he almost felt that he was blushing.
“I hope you are,” said Lucy. “When a man has to work all day and nearly all night he should go where he may get fresh air.”
“There’s very good air without going to Scotland for it,” said Lady Fawn, who kept up an excellent house at Richmond, but who, with all her daughters, could not afford autumn trips. The Fawns lived at Fawn Court all the year round, and consequently Lady Fawn thought that air was to be found in England sufficiently good for all purposes of vitality and recreation.
“It’s not quite the same thing,” said Lucy;—“at least, not for a man.”
After that she was allowed to escape into the grounds with her lover, and was made happy with half-an-hour of unalloyed bliss. To be alone with the girl to whom he is not engaged is a man’s delight;—to be alone with the man to whom she is engaged is the woman’s. When the thing is settled there is always present to the man something of a feeling of clipped wings; whereas the woman is conscious of a new power of expanding her pinions. The certainty of the thing is to him repressive. He has done his work, and gained his victory—and by conquering has become a slave. To her the certainty of the thing is the removal of a restraint which has hitherto always been on her. She can tell him everything, and be told everything—whereas her previous confidences, made with those of her own sex, have been tame, and by comparison valueless. He has no new confidence to make—unless when he comes to tell her he likes his meat well done, and wants his breakfast to be punctual. Lucy now not only promised herself, but did actually realise a great joy. He seemed to her all that her heart desired. He was a man whose manner was naturally caressing and demonstrative, and she was to him, of all women, the sweetest, the dearest, the most perfect—and all his own. “But, Frank,”—she had already been taught to call him Frank when they were alone together—“what will come of all this about Lizzie Eustace?”
“They will be married—of course.”
“Do you think so? I am sure Lady Fawn doesn’t think so.”
“What Lady Fawn thinks on such a matter cannot be helped. When a man asks a woman to marry him, and she accepts, the natural consequence is that they will be married. Don’t you think so?”
“I hope so—sometimes,” said Lucy, with her two hands joined upon his arm, and hanging to it with all her little weight.
“You really do hope it?” he said.
“Oh, I do; you know I do. Hope it! I should die if I didn’t hope it.”
“Then why shouldn’t she?” He asked his question with a quick, sharp voice, and then turned upon her for an answer.
“I don’t know,” she said, very softly, and still clinging to him. “I sometimes think there is a difference in people.”
“There is a difference; but, still, we hardly judge of people sufficiently by our own feelings. As she accepted him, you may be sure that she wishes to marry him. She has more to give than he has.”
“And I have nothing to give,” she said.
“If I thought so, I’d go back even now,” he answered. “It is because you have so much to give—so much more than most others—that I have thought of you, dreamed of you as my wife, almost ever since I first knew you.”
“I have nothing left to give,” she said. “What I ever had is all given. People call it the heart. I think it is heart, and brain, and mind, and body—and almost soul. But, Frank, though Lizzie Eustace is your cousin, I don’t want to be likened to her. She is very clever, and beautiful—and has a way with her that I know is charming;—but—”
“But what, Lucy?”
“I don’t think she cares so much as some people. I dare say she likes Lord Fawn very well, but I do not believe she loves him as I love you.”
“They’re engaged,” said Frank, “and the best thing they can do is to marry each other. I can tell you this, at any rate,”—and his manner again became serious—“if Lord Fawn behaves ill to her, I, as her cousin, shall take her part.”
“You don’t mean that you’ll—fight him!”
“No, my darling. Men don’t fight each other nowadays;—not often, at least, and Fawn and I are not of the fighting sort. I can make him understand what I mean and what others will mean without fighting him. He is making a paltry excuse.”
“But why should he want to excuse himself—without reason?”
“Because he is afraid. People have got hold of him and told him lies, and he thinks there will be a scrape about this necklace, and he hates a scrape. He’ll marry her at last, without a doubt, and Lady Fawn is only making trouble for herself by trying to prevent it. You can’t do anything.”
“Oh no;—I can’t do anything. When she was here it became at last quite disagreeable. She hardly spoke to them, and I’m sure that even the servants understood that there was a quarrel.” She did not say a word of Lizzie’s offer of the brooch to herself, nor of the stories which by degrees were
