"And do you think there is no attraction in goodness, in freshness and innocence, candour, generosity--?"
"I don"t know. But I think that if Mary"s nose had been a thought longer, and if she had kept her skin free from freckles she would have been almost pretty."
"Do you really? Luckily for Mary the man who is going to marry her thinks her lovely."
"I suppose he likes freckles. I once heard a man say he did. He said they were so original--so much character about them. And, pray, who is the man?"
"Your old adorer, and my dear friend, John Hammond."
Lesbia turned as pale as death--pale with rage and mortification. It was not jealousy, this pang which rent her shallow soul. She had ceased to care for John Hammond. The whirlpool of society had spun that first fancy out of her giddy brain. But that a man who had loved the highest, who had worshipped her, the peerless, the beautiful, should calmly transfer his affections to her younger sister, was to the last degree exasperating.
"Your friend Mr. Hammond must be a fickle fool," she exclaimed, "who does not know his own mind from day to day."
"Oh, but it was more than a day after you rejected him that he engaged himself to Molly. It was all my doing, and I am proud of my work. I took the poor fellow back to Fellside last March, bruised and broken by your cruel treatment, heartsore and depressed. I gave him over to Molly, and Molly cured him. Unconsciously, innocently, she won that n.o.ble heart.
Ah, Lesbia, you don"t know what a heart it is which you so nearly broke."
"Girls in our rank of life can"t afford to marry n.o.ble hearts," said Lesbia, scornfully. "Do you mean to tell me that Lady Maulevrier consented to the engagement?"
"She cut up rather rough at first; but Molly held her own like a young lioness--and the grandmother gave way. You see she has a fixed idea that Molly is a very second-rate sort of person compared with you, and that a husband who was not nearly good enough for you might pa.s.s muster for Molly; and so she gave way, and there isn"t a happier young woman in the three kingdoms than Mary Haselden."
"What are they to live upon?" asked Lesbia, with an incredulous air.
"Mary will have her five hundred a year. And Hammond is a very clever fellow. You may be sure he will make his mark in the world."
"And how are they to live while he is making his mark? Five hundred a year won"t do more than pay for Mary"s frocks, if she goes into society."
"Perhaps they will live without society."
"In some horrid little hovel in one of those narrow streets off Ecclestone Square," suggested Lesbia, shudderingly. "It is too dreadful to think of--a young woman dooming herself to life-long penury, just because she is so foolish as to fall in love."
"Your days for falling in love are over, I suppose, Lesbia?" said Maulevrier, contemplating his sister with keen scrutiny.
The beautiful face, so perfect in line and colour, curiously recalled that other face at Fellside; the dowager"s face, with its look of marble coldness, and the half-expressed pain under that, outward calm. Here was the face of one who had not yet known pain or pa.s.sion. Here was the cold perfection of beauty with unawakened heart.
"I don"t know; I am too busy to think of such things."
"You have done with love; and you have begun to think of marriage, of establishing yourself properly. People tell me you are going to marry Mr. Smithson."
"People tell you more about me than I know about myself."
"Come now, Lesbia, I have a right to know the truth upon this point.
Your brother--your only brother--should be the first person to be told."
"When I am engaged, I have no doubt you will be the first person, or the second person," answered Lesbia, lightly. "Lady Kirkbank, living on the premises, is likely to be the first."
"Then you are not engaged to Smithson?"
"Didn"t I tell you so just now? Mr. Smithson did me the honour to make me an offer yesterday, at about this hour; and I did myself the honour to reject him."
"And yet you were whispering together in the box last night, and you were riding in the Row with him this morning. I just met a fellow who saw you together. Do you think it is right, Lesbia, to play fast and loose with the man--to encourage him, if you don"t mean to marry him?"
"How can you accuse me of encouraging a person whom I flatly refused yesterday morning? If Mr. Smithson likes my society as a friend, must I needs deny him my friendship, ask Lady Kirkbank to shut her door against him? Mr. Smithson is very pleasant as an acquaintance; and although I don"t want to marry him, there"s no reason I should snub him."
"Smithson is not a man to be trifled with. You will find yourself entangled in a web which you won"t easily break through."
"I am not afraid of webs. By-the-bye, is it true that Mr. Smithson is likely to get a peerage?"
"I have heard people say as much. Smithson has spent no end of money on electioneering, and is a power in the House, though he very rarely speaks. His Berkshire estate gives him a good deal of influence in that county; at the last general election he subscribed twenty thou to the Conservative cause; for, like most men who have risen from nothing, your friend Smithson is a fine old Tory. He was specially elected at the Carlton six years ago, and has made himself uncommonly useful to his party. He is supposed to be great on financial questions, and comes out tremendously on colonial railways or drainage schemes, about which the House in general is in profound ignorance. On those occasions Smithson scores high. A man with immense wealth has always chances. No doubt, if you were to marry him, the peerage would be easily managed. Smithson"s money, backed by the Maulevrier influence, would go a long way. My grandmother would move heaven and earth in a case of that kind. You had better take pity on Smithson."
Lesbia laughed. That idea of a possible peerage elevated Smithson in her eyes. She knew nothing of his political career, as she lived in a set which ignored politics altogether. Mr. Smithson had never talked to her of his parliamentary duties; and it was a new thing for her to hear that he had some kind of influence in public affairs.
"Suppose I were inclined to accept him, would you like him as a brother-in-law?" she asked lightly. "I thought from your manner last night that you rather disliked him."
"I don"t quite like him or any of his breed, the newly rich, who go about in society swelling with the sense of their own importance, perspiring gold, as it were. And one has always a faint suspicion of men who have got rich very quickly, an idea that there must be some kind of juggling. Not in the case of a great contractor, perhaps, who can point to a viaduct and docks and railways, and say, "I built that, and that, and that. These are the sources of my wealth." But a man who gets enormously rich by mere ciphering! Where can his money come from, except out of other people"s pockets? I know nothing against your Mr. Smithson, but I always suspect that cla.s.s of men," concluded Maulevrier shaking his head significantly.
Lesbia was not much influenced by her brother"s notions, she had never been taught to think him an oracle. On the contrary, she had been told that his life hitherto had been all foolishness."
"When are Mary and Mr. Hammond to be married?" she asked, "Grandmother says they must wait a year. Mary is much too young--and so on, and so forth. But I see no reason for waiting."
"Surely there are reasons--financial reasons. Mr. Hammond cannot be in a position to begin housekeeping."
"Oh, they will risk all that. Molly is a daring girl. He proposed to her on the top of Helvellyn, in a storm of wind and rain."
"And she never wrote me a word about it. How very unsisterly!"
"She is as wild as a hawk, and I daresay she was too shy to tell you anything about it."
"Pray when did it all occur?"
"Just before I came to London."
"Two months ago. How absurd for me to be in ignorance all this time!
Well, I hope Mary will be sensible, and not marry till Mr. Hammond is able to give her a decent home. It would be so dreadful to have a sister muddling in poverty, and clamouring for one"s cast-off gowns."
Maulevrier laughed at this gloomy suggestion.
"It is not easy to foretell the future," he said, "but I think I may venture to promise that Molly will never wear your cast-off gowns."
"Oh, you think she would be too proud. You don"t know, perhaps, how poverty--genteel poverty--lowers one"s pride. I have heard stories from Lady Kirkbank that would make your hair stand on end. I am beginning to know the world."
"I am glad of that. If you are to live in the world it is better that you should know what it is made of. But if I had a voice or a choice in the matter I had rather my sisters stayed at Grasmere, and remained ignorant of the world and all its ways."
"While you enjoy your life in London. That is just like the selfishness of a man. Under the pretence of keeping his sisters or his wife secure from all possible contact with evil, he buries them alive in a country house, while he has all the wickedness for his own share in London. Oh, I am beginning to understand the creatures."
"I am afraid you are beginning to be wise. Remember that knowledge of evil was the prelude to the Fall. Well, good-bye."
"Won"t you stay to lunch?"
"No, thanks, I never lunch--frightful waste of time. I shall drop in at the _Haute Gomme_ and take a cup of tea later on."