To this speech, which was unusually figurative for Carrington, Mrs. Lee could find no ready answer. She could only reply that Carrington’s life was worth quite as much as his neighbour’s, and that it was worth so much to her, if not to himself, that she would not let him wreck it.
Carrington went on: “Forgive my talking in this way. I do not mean to complain. I shall always love you just as much, whether you care for me or not, because you are the only woman I have ever met, or am ever likely to meet, who seems to me perfect.”
If this was Sybil’s teaching, she had made the best of her time. Carrington’s tone and words pierced through all Mrs. Lee’s armour as though they were pointed with the most ingenious cruelty, and designed to torture her. She felt hard and small before him. Life for life, his had been, and was now, far less bright than hers, yet he was her superior. He sat there, a true man, carrying his burden calmly, quietly, without complaint, ready to face the next shock of life with the same endurance he had shown against the rest. And he thought her perfect! She felt humiliated that any brave man should say to her face that he thought her perfect! She! perfect! In her contrition she was half ready to go down at his feet and confess her sins; her hysterical dread of sorrow and suffering, her narrow sympathies, her feeble faith, her miserable selfishness, her abject cowardice. Every nerve in her body tingled with shame when she thought what a miserable fraud she was; what a mass of pretensions unfounded, of deceit ingrained. She was ready to hide her face in her hands. She was disgusted, outraged with her own image as she saw it, contrasted with Carrington’s single word: Perfect!
Nor was this the worst. Carrington was not the first man who had thought her perfect. To hear this word suddenly used again, which had never been uttered to her before except by lips now dead and gone, made her brain reel. She seemed to hear her husband once more telling her that she was perfect. Yet against this torture, she had a better defence. She had long since hardened herself to bear these recollections, and they steadied and strengthened her. She had been called perfect before now, and what had come of it? Two graves, and a broken life! She drew herself up with a face now grown quite pale and rigid. In reply to Carrington, she said not a word, but only shook her head slightly without looking at him.
He went on: “After all, it is not my own happiness I am thinking of but yours. I never was vain enough to think that I was worth your love, or that I could ever win it. Your happiness is another thing. I care so much for that as to make me dread going away, for fear that you may yet find yourself entangled in this wretched political life here, when, perhaps if I stayed, I might be of some use.”
“Do you really think, then, that I am going to fall a victim to Mr. Ratcliffe?” asked Madeleine, with a cold smile.
“Why not?” replied Carrington, in a similar tone. “He can put forward a strong claim to your sympathy and help, if not to your love. He can offer you a great field of usefulness which you want. He has been very faithful to you. Are you quite sure that even now you can refuse him without his complaining that you have trifled with him?”
“And are you quite sure,” added Mrs. Lee, evasively, “that you have not been judging him much too harshly? I think I know him better than you. He has many good qualities, and some high ones. What harm can he do me? Supposing even that he did succeed in persuading me that my life could be best used in helping his, why should I be afraid of it?”
“You and I,” said Carrington, “are wide apart in our estimates of Mr. Ratcliffe. To you, of course, he shows his best side. He is on his good behaviour, and knows that any false step will ruin him. I see in him only a coarse, selfish, unprincipled politician, who would either drag you down to his own level, or, what is more likely, would very soon disgust you and make your life a wretched self-immolation before his vulgar ambition, or compel you to leave him. In either case you would be the victim. You cannot afford to make another false start in life. Reject me! I have not a word to say against it. But be on your guard against giving your existence up to him.”
“Why do you think so ill of Mr. Ratcliffe?” asked Madeleine; “he always speaks highly of you. Do you know anything against him that the world does not?”
“His public acts are enough to satisfy me,” replied Carrington, evading a part of the question. “You know that I have never had but one opinion about him.”
There was a pause in the conversation. Both parties felt that as yet no good had come of it. At length Madeleine asked, “What would you have me do? Is it a pledge you want that I will under no circumstances marry Mr. Ratcliffe?”
“Certainly not,” was the answer; “you know me better than to think I would ask that. I only want you to take time and keep out of his influence until your mind is fairly made up. A year hence I feel certain that you will think of him as I do.”
“Then you will allow me to marry him if I find that you are mistaken,” said Mrs. Lee, with a marked tone of sarcasm.
Carrington looked annoyed, but he answered quietly, “What I
