Major Waring suffered the letter to be s.n.a.t.c.hed from his hand, and stood like one who is submitting to a test, or watching the effect of a potent drug.
"It is his second letter to you," Mrs. Lovell murmured. "I see; it is a reply to yours."
She read a few lines, and glanced up, blushing. "Am I not made to bear more than I deserve?"
"If you can do such mischief, without meaning any, to a man who is in love with another woman--," said Percy.
"Yes," she nodded, "I perceive the deduction; but inferences are like shadows on the wall--they are thrown from an object, and are monstrous distortions of it. That is why you misjudge women. You infer one thing from another, and are ruled by the inference."
He simply bowed. Edward would have answered her in a bright strain, and led her on to say brilliant things, and then have shown her, as by a sudden light, that she had lost herself, and reduced her to feel the strength and safety of his hard intellect. That was the idea in her brain. The next moment her heart ejected it.
"Petty, when I asked permission to look at this letter, I was not aware how great a compliment it would be to me if I was permitted to see it.
It betrays your friend."
"It betrays something more," said he.
Mrs. Lovell cast down her eyes and read, without further comment.
These were the contents:--
"My Dear Percy,--Now that I see her every day again, I am worse than ever; and I remember thinking once or twice that Mrs. L. had cured me. I am a sort of man who would jump to reach the top of a mountain. I understand how superior Mrs. L. is to every woman in the world I have seen; but Rhoda cures me on that head. Mrs. Lovell makes men mad and happy, and Rhoda makes them sensible and miserable. I have had the talk with Rhoda. It is all over. I have felt like being in a big room with one candle alight ever since.
She has not looked at me, and does nothing but get by her father whenever she can, and takes his hand and holds it. I see where the blow has struck her: it has killed her pride; and Rhoda is almost all pride. I suppose she thinks our plan is the best. She has not said she does, and does not mention her sister. She is going to die, or she turns nun, or marries a gentleman. I shall never get her. She will not forgive me for bringing this news to her. I told you how she coloured, the first day I came; which has all gone now.
She just opens her lips to me. You remember Corporal Thwaites--you caught his horse, when he had his foot near wrenched off, going through the gate--and his way of breathing through the under-row of his teeth--the poor creature was in such pain--that"s just how she takes her breath. It makes her look sometimes like that woman"s head with the snakes for her hair. This bothers me--how is it you and Mrs. Lovell manage to talk together of such things? Why, two men rather hang their heads a bit. My notion is, that women-- ladies, in especial, ought never to hear of sad things of this sort.
Of course, I mean, if they do, it cannot harm them. It only upsets me. Why are ladies less particular than girls in Rhoda"s place?"
("Shame being a virtue," was Mrs. Lovell"s running comment.)
"She comes up to town with her father to-morrow. The farm is ruined. The poor old man had to ask me for a loan to pay the journey. Luckily, Rhoda has saved enough with her pennies and two-pences. Ever since I left the farm, it has been in the hands of an old donkey here, who has worked it his own way. What is in the ground will stop there, and may as well.
"I leave off writing, I write such stuff; and if I go on writing to you, I shall be putting these things "--!--!--!" The way you write about Mrs. Lovell, convinces me you are not in my sc.r.a.pe, or else gentlemen are just as different from their inferiors as ladies are from theirs. That"s the question. What is the meaning of your "not being able to leave her for a day, for fear she should fall under other influences"? Then, I copy your words, you say, "She is all things to everybody, and cannot help it." In that case, I would seize my opportunity and her waist, and tell her she was locked up from anybody else. Friendship with men--but I cannot understand friendship with women, and watching them to keep them right, which must mean that you do not think much of them."
Mrs. Lovell, at this point, raised her eyes abruptly from the letter and returned it.
"You discuss me very freely with your friend," she said.
Percy drooped to her. "I warned you when you wished to read it."
"But, you see, you have bewildered him. It was scarcely wise to write other than plain facts. Men of that cla.s.s." She stopped.
"Of that cla.s.s?" said he.
"Men of any cla.s.s, then: you yourself: if any one wrote to you such things, what would you think? It is very unfair. I have the honour of seeing you daily, because you cannot trust me out of your sight? What is there inexplicable about me? Do you wonder that I talk openly of women who are betrayed, and do my best to help them?".
"On the contrary; you command my esteem," said Percy.
"But you think me a puppet?"
"Fond of them, perhaps?" his tone of voice queried in a manner that made her smile.
"I hate them," she said, and her face expressed it.
"But you make them."
"How? You torment me."
"How can I explain the magic? Are you not making one of me now, where I stand?"
"Then, sit."
"Or kneel?"
"Oh, Percy! do nothing ridiculous."
Inveterate insight was a characteristic of Major Waring; but he was not the less in Mrs. Lovell"s net. He knew it to be a charm that she exercised almost unknowingly. She was simply a sweet instrument for those who could play on it, and therein lay her mighty fascination.
Robert"s blunt advice that he should seize the chance, take her and make her his own, was powerful with him. He checked the particular appropriating action suggested by Robert.
"I owe you an explanation," he said. "Margaret, my friend."
"You can think of me as a friend, Percy?"
"If I can call you my friend, what would I not call you besides? I did you a great and shameful wrong when you were younger. Hush! you did not deserve that. Judge of yourself as you will; but I know now what my feelings were then. The sublime executioner was no more than a spiteful man. You give me your pardon, do you not? Your hand?"
She had reached her hand to him, but withdrew it quickly.
"Not your hand, Margaret? But, you must give it to some one. You will be ruined, if you do not."
She looked at him with full eyes. "You know it then?" she said slowly; but the gaze diminished as he went on.
"I know, by what I know of you, that you of all women should owe a direct allegiance. Come; I will a.s.sume privileges. Are you free?"
"Would you talk to me so, if you thought otherwise?" she asked.
"I think I would," said Percy. "A little depends upon the person. Are you pledged at all to Mr. Edward Blancove?"
"Do you suppose me one to pledge myself?"
"He is doing a base thing."
"Then, Percy, let an a.s.surance of my knowledge of that be my answer."
"You do not love the man?"
"Despise him, say!"
"Is he aware of it?"
"If clear writing can make him."
"You have told him as much?"