stopped. What could our life have been? I was telling a friend to mine the other day, a lady, that there are people who cannot afford to wear hearts inside them. If I had jumped at your offer,—and there was a moment when I would have done so——"
"Was there?"
"Indeed there was, George." The "George" didn't mean quite as much as it might have meant between others, because they were cousins. "But, if I had, the joint home of us all must have been in Mr. Price's farm-house."
"It isn't a farm-house."
"You know what I mean. But I want you to believe that I thought of you quite as much as of myself,—more than of myself. I should at any rate have had brilliant hopes before me. I could understand what it would be to be the Marchioness of Brotherton. I could have borne much for years to think that at some future day I might hang on your arm in London salons as your wife. I had an ambition which now can never be gratified. I, too, can look on this picture and on that. But I had to decide for you as well as for myself, and I did decide that it was not for your welfare nor for your honour, nor for your happiness to marry a woman who could not help you in the world." She was now leaning forward and almost touching his arm. "I think sometimes that those most nearly concerned hardly know what a woman may have to endure because she is not selfish."
How could any man stand this? There are words which a man cannot resist from a woman even though he knows them to be false. Lord George, though he did not quite believe that all these words were sincere, did think that there was a touch of sincerity about them—an opinion which the reader probably will not share with Lord George. "Have you suffered?" he said, putting out his hand to her and taking hers.
"Suffered!" she exclaimed, drawing away her hand, and sitting bolt upright and shaking her head. "Do you think that I am a fool, not to know! Do you suppose that I am blind and deaf? When I said that I was one of those who could not afford to wear a heart, did you imagine that I had been able to get rid of the article? No, it is here still," and she put her hand upon her side. "It is here still, and very troublesome I find it. I suppose the time will come when it will die away. They say that every plant will fade if it be shut in from the light, and never opened to the rains of heaven."
"Alas! alas!" he said. "I did not know that you would feel like that."
"Of course I feel. I have had something to do with my life, and I have done this with it! Two men have honoured me with their choice, and out of the two I have chosen—Mr. Houghton. I comfort myself by telling myself that I did right;—and I did do right. But the
comfort is not very comforting." Still he sat looking at the fire. He knew that it was open to him to get up and swear to her that she still had his heart. She could not be angry with him as she had said as much to himself. And he almost believed at the moment that it was so. He was quite alive to the attraction of the wickedness, though, having a conscience, he was aware that the wickedness should, if possible, be eschewed. There is no romance in loving one's own wife. The knowledge that it is a duty deadens the pleasure. "I did not mean to say all this," she exclaimed at last, sobbing.