"For others there may be excuse," she continued, thinking then, as always, of that scene at West Putford, and defending to herself him whom to herself she so often accused; "but for you there can be none. If you drive him from you now, whatever evil may befall him will lie like a weight of lead upon your heart. If you refuse him now, he is not the man to take it quietly and wait."
"I can live without him."
"Yes; it is your pride to say so; and I believe you could live without him. But I think too well of you to believe that you could live happily without him; nor will he be happy without you. You will both be proud, and stony-hearted, and wretched—stony-hearted at least in appearance; not fortunate enough to become so in reality."
"Why, Adela, one would think that you yourself were the victim of some passion nipped in its bud by a cruel prudence."
"And so I am." As she said this she rose from her seat as though she intended, standing there before her companion, to go on with her impassioned warning. But the effect was too much for her; and falling down on her knees, with her face buried in her hands, she rested them on the sofa, and gave way to sobs and tears.
Caroline was of course much shocked, and did what she could to relieve her; but Adela merely begged that she might be left to herself one minute. "One minute," she said, plaintively, in a voice so different from that she had used just now; "one minute and I shall be well again. I have been very foolish, but never say anything about it; never, never, not to any one; promise me, promise me, Caroline. Dear Caroline, you do promise me? No one knows it; no one must know it."
Caroline did promise; but with a natural curiosity she wanted to know the whole story. Adela, however, would tell her nothing, would say no more about herself. In the agony of her strong feeling she had once pointed to herself as a beacon; but even she herself could not endure to do this again. She would say nothing further about that; but in a more plaintive and softer tone she did not cease to implore her friend not to throw away from her the rich heart which was still within her grasp.
A scene such as this could not but have an effect on Caroline; but it did not ultimately have that which Adela had wished. It was Miss Waddington's doctrine that she should not under any circumstances of life permit herself to be carried away by passion. Why then should she allow Adela's passion to convince her? What were the facts? Of Adela's own case she knew nothing. It might be that she had been cruelly treated. Her friends, her lover, or even she herself might have been in fault. But it would surely be the extreme of folly for her, Caroline Waddington, to allow herself to be actuated by the example of one who had not even shown her of what that example consisted.
The upshot of it all was, that at the end of the week she wrote to George, declaring that, grieved as she was to grieve him, she felt herself obliged to adhere to her former resolution. She also wrote strongly, and perhaps with more force of logic than her lover had done. "I trust the time will come," she said, "when you will acknowledge that I have been right. But of this I am quite sure, that were I now to yield to you, the time would come very quickly when you would acknowledge me to have been wrong; and that you should then think me to have been wrong would kill me. I am not, I know, fitted, either by disposition or education, to be a poor man's wife. I say this with no pride; though if you choose to take it for pride, I cannot help myself. Nor are you fitted to be the husband of a poor wife. Your love and enthusiasm now make you look on want as a slight evil; but have you ever tried want? Since you left school, have you not had everything that money could buy you? Have you ever been called on to deny yourself any reasonable wish? Never, I believe. Nor have I. What right have we then to suppose that we can do that for each other which we have never yet done for ourselves?
"You talk of the misery of waiting. Is it not because you have as yet known no misery? Have not all men to wait who look for success in life?—to work, and wait, and bide their time? Your present work is, I know, too hard. In whatever you do, you have too much enthusiasm. Do not kill yourself by work. For my sake, if I may still plead my own sake, do not do so. You say you have given up that sort of life to which your disposition would have led you. I do not believe your disposition to be bad, and I should be grieved to think that you debar yourself from pleasures that are not bad because you are engaged to me." There was that in the eagerness of Bertram's protestations on this point which could not but be flattering to any girl; but Caroline, when she thought of it, did not wish to be so flattered. She required less passion in her lover and more judgment. She wanted him to be more awake to the fact that the true meaning of their engagement was this, that they two should join themselves together in their world's battle, in order that together each might fight that battle more successfully than either of them could do apart.