“And I am to do it—to my absolute ruin, and to your great injury?”
“I think I could almost do it myself.” And Lizzie raised her hand as though there were some weapon in it. “But, Frank, there must be something. You wouldn’t have me sit down and bear it. All the world has been told of the engagement. There must be some punishment.”
“You would not wish to have an action brought—for breach of promise?”
“I would wish to do whatever would hurt him most—without hurting myself,” said Lizzie.
“You won’t give up the necklace?” said Frank.
“Certainly not,” said Lizzie. “Give it up for his sake—a man that I have always despised?”
“Then you had better let him go.”
“I will not let him go. What—to be pointed at as the woman that Lord Fawn had jilted? Never! My necklace should be nothing more to him than this ring.” And she drew from her finger a little circlet of gold with a stone, for which she had owed Messrs. Harter and Benjamin five-and-thirty pounds till Sir Florian had settled that account for her. “What cause can he give for such treatment?”
“He acknowledges that there is no cause which he can state openly.”
“And I am to bear it? And it is you that tell me so? Oh, Frank!”
“Let us understand each other, Lizzie. I will not fight him—that is, with pistols; nor will I attempt to thrash him. It would be useless to argue whether public opinion is right or wrong; but public opinion is now so much opposed to that kind of thing, that it is out of the question. I should injure your position and destroy my own. If you mean to quarrel with me on that score, you had better say so.”
Perhaps at that moment he almost wished that she would quarrel with him, but she was otherwise disposed. “Oh, Frank,” she said, “do not desert me.”
“I will not desert you.”
“You feel that I am ill-used, Frank?”
“I do. I think that his conduct is inexcusable.”
“And there is to be no punishment?” she asked, with that strong indignation at injustice which the unjust always feel when they are injured.
“If you carry yourself well—quietly and with dignity—the world will punish him.”
“I don’t believe a bit of it. I am not a Patient Grizel who can content myself with heaping benefits on those who injure me, and then thinking that they are coals of fire. Lucy Morris is one of that sort.” Frank ought to have resented the attack, but he did not. “I have no such tame virtues. I’ll tell him to his face what he is. I’ll lead him such a life that he shall be sick of the very name of necklace.”
“You cannot ask him to marry you.”
“I will. What, not ask a man to keep his promise when you are engaged to him? I am not going to be such a girl as that.”
“Do you love him, then?”
“Love him! I hate him. I always despised him, and now I hate him.”
“And yet you would marry him?”
“Not for worlds, Frank. No. Because you advised me, I thought that I would do so. Yes, you did, Frank. But for you I would never have dreamed of taking him. You know, Frank, how it was—when you told me of him and wouldn’t come to me yourself.” Now again she was sitting close to him and had her hand upon his arm. “No, Frank; even to please you I could not marry him now. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. He shall ask me again. In spite of those idiots at Richmond he shall kneel at my feet—necklace or no necklace; and then—then I’ll tell him what I think of him. Marry him! I would not touch him with a pair of tongs.” As she said this, she was holding her cousin fast by the hand.
XXIV
Showing What Frank Greystock Thought About Marriage
It had not been much after noon when Frank Greystock reached Portray Castle, and it was very nearly five when he left it. Of course he had lunched with the two ladies, and as the conversation before lunch had been long and interesting, they did not sit down till near three. Then Lizzie had taken him out to show him the grounds and garden, and they had clambered together down to the sea-beach. “Leave me here,” she had said, when he insisted on going because of his friend at the Cottage. When he suggested that she would want help to climb back up the rocks to the castle, she shook her head, as though her heart was too full to admit of a consideration so trifling. “My thoughts flow more freely here with the surge of the water in my ears, than they will with that old woman droning to me. I come here often, and know every rock and every stone.” That was not exactly true, as she had never been down but once before. “You mean to come again?” He told her that of course he should come again. “I will name neither day nor hour. I have nothing to take me away. If I am not at the castle I shall be at this spot. Goodbye, Frank.” He took her in his arms and kissed her—of course as a brother; and then he clambered up, got on his pony, and rode away. “I dinna ken just what to mak’ o’ him,” said Gowran to his wife. “May be he is her coosin; but coosins are nae that sib that a weedow is to be hailed aboot jist ane as though she were ony quean at a fair.” From which it may be inferred that Mr. Gowran had watched the pair as they were descending together towards the shore.
Frank had so much to think of, riding back to the Cottage, that when he came to the gap, instead of turning round along the
