""Reward her, lord of the creation-reward her!"" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed she, with a curled lip.
""And be repaid a thousandfold."
""If she willed it, monseigneur."
""And she should will it."
""You have stipulated for any temper Fate wills. Compulsion is flint and a blow to the metal of some souls."
""And love the spark it elicits."
""Who cares for the love that is but a spark-seen, flown upward, and gone?"
""I must find my orphan girl. Tell me how, Miss Keeldar."
""Advertise; and be sure you add, when you describe the qualifications, she must be a good plain cook."
541""I must find her; and when I do find her I shall marry her."
""Not you!" and her voice took a sudden accent of peculiar scorn.
"I liked this. I had roused her from the pensive mood in which I had first found her. I would stir her further.
""Why doubt it?"
""You marry!"
""Yes, of course; nothing more evident than that I can and shall."
""The contrary is evident, Mr. Moore."
"She charmed me in this mood-waxing disdainful, half insulting; pride, temper, derision, blent in her large fine eye, that had just now the look of a merlin"s.
""Favour me with your reasons for such an opinion, Miss Keeldar."
""How will you manage to marry, I wonder?"
""I shall manage it with ease and speed when I find the proper person."
""Accept celibacy!" (and she made a gesture with her hand as if she gave me something) "take it as your doom!"
""No; you cannot give what I already have. Celibacy has been mine for thirty years. If you wish to offer me a gift, a parting present, a keepsake, you must change the boon."
""Take worse, then!"
""How-what?"
"I now felt, and looked, and spoke eagerly. I was unwise to quit my sheet-anchor of calm even for an instant; it deprived me of an advantage and transferred it to her. The little spark of temper dissolved in sarcasm, and eddied over her countenance in the ripples of a mocking smile.
""Take a wife that has paid you court to save your modesty, and thrust herself upon you to spare your scruples."
""Only show me where."
""Any stout widow that has had a few husbands already, and can manage these things."
""She must not be rich, then. Oh these riches!"
""Never would you have gathered the produce of the gold-bearing garden. You have not courage to confront the sleepless dragon; you have not craft to borrow the aid of Atlas."
""You look hot and haughty."
542""And you far haughtier. Yours is the monstrous pride which counterfeits humility."
""I am a dependant; I know my place."
""I am a woman; I know mine."
""I am poor; I must be proud."
""I have received ordinances, and own obligations stringent as yours."
"We had reached a critical point now, and we halted and looked at each other. She would not give in, I felt. Beyond this I neither felt nor saw. A few moments yet were mine. The end was coming-I heard its rush-but not come. I would dally, wait, talk, and when impulse urged I would act. I am never in a hurry; I never was in a hurry in my whole life. Hasty people drink the nectar of existence scalding hot; I taste it cool as dew. I proceeded: "Apparently, Miss Keeldar, you are as little likely to marry as myself. I know you have refused three-nay, four-advantageous offers, and, I believe, a fifth. Have you rejected Sir Philip Nunnely?"
"I put this question suddenly and promptly.
""Did you think I should take him?"
""I thought you might."
""On what grounds, may I ask?"
""Conformity of rank, age, pleasing contrast of temper-for he is mild and amiable-harmony of intellectual tastes."
""A beautiful sentence! Let us take it to pieces. "Conformity of rank." He is quite above me. Compare my grange with his palace, if you please. I am disdained by his kith and kin. "Suitability of age." We were born in the same year; consequently he is still a boy, while I am a woman-ten years his senior to all intents and purposes. "Contrast of temper." Mild and amiable, is he; I-what? Tell me."
""Sister of the spotted, bright, quick, fiery leopard."
""And you would mate me with a kid-the millennium being yet millions of centuries from mankind; being yet, indeed, an archangel high in the seventh heaven, uncommissioned to descend? Unjust barbarian! "Harmony of intellectual tastes." He is fond of poetry, and I hate it--"
""Do you? That is news."
""I absolutely shudder at the sight of metre or at the sound of rhyme whenever I am at the priory or Sir Philip543 at Fieldhead. Harmony, indeed! When did I whip up syllabub sonnets or string stanzas fragile as fragments of gla.s.s? and when did I betray a belief that those penny-beads were genuine brilliants?"
""You might have the satisfaction of leading him to a higher standard, of improving his tastes."
""Leading and improving! teaching and tutoring! bearing and forbearing! Pah! my husband is not to be my baby. I am not to set him his daily lesson and see that he learns it, and give him a sugar-plum if he is good, and a patient, pensive, pathetic lecture if he is bad. But it is like a tutor to talk of the "satisfaction of teaching." I suppose you think it the finest employment in the world. I don"t. I reject it. Improving a husband! No. I shall insist upon my husband improving me, or else we part."
""G.o.d knows it is needed!"