“He is still brokenhearted about you,” said the favoured lover as soon as his rival had left the room.
“It is not that,” said Violet. “He is brokenhearted about everything. The whole world is vanishing away from him. I wish he could have made up his mind to marry that German woman with all the money.” It must be understood, however, that Phineas had never spoken a word to anyone as to the offer which the German woman had made to him.
It was on the morning of the Sunday on which he was to leave London that he saw Lady Laura. He had asked that it might be so, in order that he might then have nothing more upon his mind. He found her quite alone, and he could see by her eyes that she had been weeping. As he looked at her, remembering that it was not yet six years since he had first been allowed to enter that room, he could not but perceive how very much she was altered in appearance. Then she had been three-and-twenty, and had not looked to be a day older. Now she might have been taken to be nearly forty, so much had her troubles preyed upon her spirit, and eaten into the vitality of her youth. “So you have come to say goodbye,” she said, smiling as she rose to meet him.
“Yes, Lady Laura;—to say goodbye. Not forever, I hope, but probably for long.”
“No, not forever. At any rate, we will not think so.” Then she paused; but he was silent, sitting with his hat dangling in his two hands, and his eyes fixed upon the floor. “Do you know, Mr. Finn,” she continued, “that sometimes I am very angry with myself about you.”
“Then it must be because you have been too kind to me.”
“It is because I fear that I have done much to injure you. From the first day that I knew you—do you remember, when we were talking here, in this very room, about the beginning of the Reform Bill;—from that day I wished that you should come among us and be one of us.”
“I have been with you, to my infinite satisfaction—while it lasted.”
“But it has not lasted, and now I fear that it has done you harm.”
“Who can say whether it has been for good or evil? But of this I am sure you will be certain—that I am very grateful to you for all the goodness you have shown me.” Then again he was silent.
She did not know what it was that she wanted, but she did desire some expression from his lips that should be warmer than an expression of gratitude. An expression of love—of existing love—she would have felt to be an insult, and would have treated it as such. Indeed, she knew that from him no such insult could come. But she was in that morbid, melancholy state of mind which requires the excitement of more than ordinary sympathy, even though that sympathy be all painful; and I think that she would have been pleased had he referred to the passion for herself which he had once expressed. If he would have spoken of his love, and of her mistake, and have made some half-suggestion as to what might have been their lives had things gone differently—though she would have rebuked him even for that—still it would have comforted her. But at this moment, though he remembered much that had passed between them, he was not even thinking of the Braes of Linter. All that had taken place four years ago;—and there had been so many other things since which had moved him even more than that! “You have heard what I have arranged for myself?” she said at last.
“Your father has told me that you are going to Dresden.”
“Yes;—he will accompany me—coming home of course for Parliament. It is a sad breakup, is it not? But the lawyer says that if I remain here I may be subject to very disagreeable attempts from Mr. Kennedy to force me to go back again. It is odd, is it not, that he should not understand how impossible it is?”
“He means to do his duty.”
“I believe so. But he becomes more stern every day to those who are with him. And then, why should I remain here? What is there to tempt me? As a woman separated from her husband I cannot take an interest in those things which used to charm me. I feel that I am crushed and quelled by my position, even though there is no disgrace in it.”
“No disgrace, certainly,” said Phineas.
“But I am nobody—or worse than nobody.”
“And I also am going to be a nobody,” said Phineas, laughing.
“Ah; you are a man and will get over it, and you have many years before you will begin to be growing old. I am growing old already. Yes, I am. I feel it, and know it, and see it. A woman has a fine game to play; but then she is so easily bowled out, and the term allowed to her is so short.”
“A man’s allowance of time may be short too,” said Phineas.
“But he can try his hand again.” Then there was another pause. “I had thought, Mr. Finn, that you would have married,” she said in her very lowest voice.
“You knew all my hopes and fears about that.”
“I mean that you would have married Madame Goesler.”
“What made you think that, Lady Laura?”
“Because I saw that she liked you, and because such a marriage would have been so suitable. She has all that you want. You know what they say of her now?”
“What do they say?”
“That the Duke of Omnium offered to make her his wife, and that she refused him for your sake.”
“There is nothing that people won’t say;—nothing on earth,” said Phineas. Then he got
