Without consciously appreciating the nicety of the parallel here, Lady Richard began to think of Weston Marchmont.
"I suppose Mr. Marchmont'll take Fanny now," she said. "I don't know, though; he won't like any sort of connection with Alexander Quisanté. How selfish people are! They never think of what their marriages mean to their relations."
This observation expressed a large part of what was felt by society; add friends to relations, and it summed up one side of the indictment against May Gaston. Lady Attlebridge's helpless and bewildered woe was one instance of its truth, Fanny's rage another; to look farther afield, May's friends and acquaintances discovered great cause for vexation in that they saw themselves somehow "let in for" Quisanté. At least the alternative was to drop May Gaston as entirely as the unfortunate circus proprietor's wife had been dropped; and this alternative was a difficult one. Had Quisanté's raid resulted in the seizure of some insignificant colourless girl who had been merely tolerated for the sake of who she was without possessing any claims in respect of what she was, the dropping would have been easy; but May was not of that kind. She was not only one of them, but very conspicuous among them, one of their ornaments, one in whom they took pride; they would have acknowledged in her a natural leader so soon as a suitable marriage gave her the necessary status and experience. Her treachery was the more flagrant, Quisanté's presumption the more enormous, their own course of action the more puzzling to decide.
Yet in their hearts they knew that they must swallow the man; events were too strong for them. Dick Benyon had forced him on them in one side of life, May Gaston now did the like in another; henceforward he must be and would be among them. This consciousness mingled an ingredient of asperity with their genuine pity for May. She would not merely have herself to thank for the troubles which would certainly come upon her; her misfortunes must be regarded as in part a proper punishment for the annoyance she was inflicting on her friends. As for Dick Benyon, it was impossible to speak to him without perceiving that if remorse be in truth the sharpest penalty of sin, he was already punished enough.
The poor man's state was indeed such as to move compassion. Besides his old friend Lady Attlebridge's dumbly accusing eyes, besides Fanny's and Lady Richard's by no means dumb reproaches, a very heavy blow had fallen on him. In the words of his own complaint, his brother Jimmy had gone back on him—and back on his allegiance to Alexander Quisanté. The engagement was too much for Jimmy, and in the revulsion of feeling he became downright hostile to Quisanté's claims and pretensions. How could he not when Fanny Gaston imperiously and almost tearfully commanded him to attach himself to her banner, and to behold with her eyes the indignity suffered by the noble family of Gaston? Logic was not Jimmy's strong point, and he confounded poor Dick by the twofold assertion that the thing was utterly incredible, and that Dick and he had been most inconceivably idiotic not to have foreseen it from the first hour that they took up Quisanté. In this stress of feeling the brothers spoke to one another with candour.
"You know how I feel about Fanny," said Jimmy, "so you can imagine how much I like it."
"Oh, yes, I know; and I quite understand that you wanted Marchmont to marry May," Dick retorted in an alien savageness born of his wounded spirit.
Jimmy was taken aback by this direct onslaught, but his native honesty forbade him to deny the charge point-blank.
"Supposing she came to like me," he grumbled, "it wouldn't be over and above pleasant to have Quisanté for a brother-in-law."
Dick was roused; he summoned up his old faith and his old admiration.