“Do you think,” said Edith, with a little solemnity, from which it cost her some trouble to keep out a laugh, “that if I could consent (which I cannot: it is impossible), do you think it would not be a surprise, and perhaps a painful one, to—the other lady—if she heard you were coming to America so?”
Lord Millefleurs raised his eyes for a moment to the ceiling, and he sighed. It was a tribute due to other days and other hopes. “I think not,” he said. “She was very disinterested. Indeed she would not hear of it. She said she regarded me as a mother, don’t you know? There is something very strange in these things,” he added, quickly forgetting (as appeared) his position as lover, and putting Edith’s hand unconsciously out of his. “There was not, you would have supposed, any chance of such feelings arising. And in point of fact it was not suitable at all. Still, had she not seen so very clearly what was my duty—”
“I know now,” said Edith; “it was the lady who—advised you to come home.”
He did not reply directly. “There never was anybody with such a keen eye for duty,” he said; “when she found out I hadn’t written to my mother, don’t you know, that was when she pulled me up. ‘Don’t speak to me,’ she said. She would not hear a word. I was just obliged to pack up. But it was perfectly unsuitable. I never could help acknowledging that.”
“Wilfrid,” said Edith, half in real, half in fictitious enthusiasm—for it served her purpose so admirably that it was difficult not to assume a little more than she felt—“how can you stand there and tell me that there was anything unsuitable in a girl who could behave so finely as that. Is it because she had no stupid little title in her family, for example? You have titles enough for half-a-dozen, I hope. Are you not ashamed to speak to one girl of another like that—”
“Thank you,” said Millefleurs, softly—“thank you; you are a darling. All you say is quite true. But she is not—exactly a girl. The fact is—she is older than—my people would have liked. Of course that was a matter of complete indifference to me.”
“O‑oh! of course,” said Edith, faintly: this is a point on which girls are not sympathetic. She was very much taken aback by the intimation. But she recovered her courage, and said with a great deal of interest, “Tell me all about her now.”
“Are you quite decided?” he said solemnly. “Edith—let us pause a little; don’t condemn me, don’t you know, to disappointment and heartbreak, and all that, without sufficient cause. I feel sure we should be happy together. I for one would be the happiest man—”
“I could not, I could not,” she cried, with a sudden little effusion of feeling, quite unintentional. A flush of hot colour ran over her, her eyes filled with tears. She looked at him involuntarily, almost unconscious, with a certain appeal, which she herself only half understood, in her eyes. But Millefleurs understood, not at the half word, as the French say, but at the half thought which he discovered in the delicate transparent soul looking at him through those two involuntary tears. He gazed at her for a moment with a sudden startled enlargement of his own keen little eyes. “To be sure!” he cried. “How was it I never thought of that before?”
Edith felt as if she had made some great confession, some cruel admission, she did not know what. She turned away from him trembling. This half comic interview suddenly turned in a moment to one of intense and overwhelming, almost guilty emotion. What had she owned to? What was it he made so sure of? She could not tell. But now it was that Millefleurs showed the perfect little gentleman he was. The discovery was not entirely agreeable to his amour propre, and wounded his pride a little; but in the meantime the necessary thing was to set Edith at her ease so far as was possible, and make her forget that she had in any way committed herself. What he did was to set a chair for her, with her back to the lamp, so that her countenance need not be revealed for the moment, and to sit down by her side with confidential calmness. “Since you wish it,” he said, “and are so kind as to take an interest in her, there is nothing I should like so much as to tell you about my dear Miss Nelly Field. I should like you to be friends.”
Would it were possible to describe the silent hush of the house while these two talked in this preposterous manner in the solitude so carefully prepared for them! Lord Lindores sat breathless in his library, listening for every sound, fixing his eyes upon his door, feeling it inconceivable that such a simple matter should take so long a time to accomplish. Lady Lindores in her chamber, still more anxious, foreseeing endless struggles with her husband if Millefleurs persevered, and almost worse, his tragical wrath and displeasure if Millefleurs (as was almost certain) accepted at once Edith’s refusal, sat by her fire in the dark, and cried a little, and prayed, almost without knowing what it was that she asked of God. Not, surely, that Edith should sacrifice herself? Oh no; but that all might go well—that there might be peace and content. She did not dictate how that was to be. After a while both father and mother began to raise their heads, to say to themselves that unless he had been well received, Millefleurs would not have remained
