“Does she know that he is here?” Lady Baldock asked her daughter.
“Not yet, mamma.”
“Oh dear, oh dear! I suppose she ought to see him. She has given him so much encouragement!”
“I suppose she will do as she pleases, mamma.”
“Augusta, how can you talk in that way? Am I to have no control in my own house?” It was, however, soon apparent to her that in this matter she was to have no control.
“Lord Chiltern is downstairs,” said Violet, coming into the room abruptly.
“So Augusta tells me. Sit down, my dear.”
“I cannot sit down, aunt—not just now. I have sent down to say that I would be with him in a minute. He is the most impatient soul alive, and I must not keep him waiting.”
“And you mean to see him?”
“Certainly I shall see him,” said Violet, as she left the room.
“I wonder that any woman should ever take upon herself the charge of a niece!” said Lady Baldock to her daughter in a despondent tone, as she held up her hands in dismay. In the meantime, Violet had gone downstairs with a quick step, and had then boldly entered the room in which her lover was waiting to receive her.
“I have to thank you for coming to me, Violet,” said Lord Chiltern. There was still in his face something of savagery—an expression partly of anger and partly of resolution to tame the thing with which he was angry. Violet did not regard the anger half so keenly as she did that resolution of taming. An angry lord, she thought, she could endure, but she could not bear the idea of being tamed by anyone.
“Why should I not come?” she said. “Of course I came when I was told that you were here. I do not think that there need be a quarrel between us, because we have changed our minds.”
“Such changes make quarrels,” said he.
“It shall not do so with me, unless you choose that it shall,” said Violet. “Why should we be enemies—we who have known each other since we were children? My dearest friends are your father and your sister. Why should we be enemies?”
“I have come to ask you whether you think that I have ill-used you?”
“Ill-used me! Certainly not. Has anyone told you that I have accused you?”
“No one has told me so.”
“Then why do you ask me?”
“Because I would not have you think so—if I could help it. I did not intend to be rough with you. When you told me that my life was disreputable—”
“Oh, Oswald, do not let us go back to that. What good will it do?”
“But you said so.”
“I think not.”
“I believe that that was your word—the harshest word that you could use in all the language.”
“I did not mean to be harsh. If I used it, I will beg your pardon. Only let there be an end of it. As we think so differently about life in general, it was better that we should not be married. But that is settled, and why should we go back to words that were spoken in haste, and which are simply disagreeable?”
“I have come to know whether it is settled.”
“Certainly. You settled it yourself, Oswald. I told you what I thought myself bound to tell you. Perhaps I used language which I should not have used. Then you told me that I could not be your wife;—and I thought you were right, quite right.”
“I was wrong, quite wrong,” he said impetuously. “So wrong, that I can never forgive myself, if you do not relent. I was such a fool, that I cannot forgive myself my folly. I had known before that I could not live without you; and when you were mine, I threw you away for an angry word.”
“It was not an angry word,” she said.
“Say it again, and let me have another chance to answer it.”
“I think I said that idleness was not—respectable, or something like that, taken out of a copybook probably. But you are a man who do not like rebukes, even out of copybooks. A man so thin-skinned as you are must choose for himself a wife with a softer tongue than mine.”
“I will choose none other!” he said. But still he was savage in his tone and in his gestures. “I made my choice long since, as you know well enough. I do not change easily. I cannot change in this. Violet, say that you will be my wife once more, and I will swear to work for you like a coal-heaver.”
“My wish is that my husband—should I ever have one—should work, not exactly as a coal-heaver.”
“Come, Violet,” he said—and now the look of savagery departed from him, and there came a smile over his face, which, however, had in it more of sadness than of hope or joy—“treat me fairly—or rather, treat me generously if you can. I do not know whether you ever loved me much.”
“Very much—years ago, when you were a boy.”
“But not since? If it be so, I had better go. Love on one side only is a poor affair at best.”
“A very poor affair.”
“It is better to bear anything than to try and make out life with that. Some of you women never want to love anyone.”
“That was what I was saying of myself to Laura but the other day. With some women it is so easy. With others it is so difficult, that perhaps it never comes to them.”
“And with you?”
“Oh, with me—. But it is better in these matters to confine oneself to generalities. If you please, I will not describe myself personally. Were I to do so, doubtless I should do it falsely.”
“You love no one else, Violet?”
“That is my affair, my lord.”
“By heavens, and it is mine too. Tell me that you do, and I will go away and leave you at once. I will not ask his name, and I will trouble you no more. If it is not so, and if it is
