“Then, Fanny, I truly pity you.”
“No, Selina; it’s I that pity you,” said Fanny, roused to energy as different thoughts crowded to her mind. “You, who think more of your position as an earl’s daughter—an aristocrat, than of your nature as a woman! Thank Heaven, I’m not a queen, to be driven to have other feelings than those of my sex. I do love Lord Ballindine, and if I had the power to cease to do so this moment, I’d sooner drown myself than exercise it.”
“Then why were you weak enough to reject him?”
“Because I was a weak, wretched, foolish girl. I said it in a moment of passion, and my uncle acted on it at once, without giving me one minute for reflection—without allowing me one short hour to look into my own heart, and find how I was deceiving myself in thinking that I ought to part from him. I told Lord Cashel in the morning that I would give him up; and before I had time to think of what I had said, he had been here, and had been turned out of the house. Oh, Selina! it was very, very cruel in your father to take me at my word so shortly!” And Fanny hid her face in her handkerchief, and burst into tears.
“That’s unfair, Fanny; it couldn’t be cruel in him to do for you that which he would have done for his own daughter. He thought, and thinks, that Lord Ballindine would not make you happy.”
“Why should he think so?—he’d no business to think so,” sobbed Fanny through her tears.
“Who could have a business to think for you, if not your guardian?”
“Why didn’t he think so then, before he encouraged me to receive him? It was because Frank wouldn’t do just what he was bid; it was because he wouldn’t become stiff, and solemn, and grave like—like—” Fanny was going to make a comparison that would not have been flattering either to Lady Selina or to her father, but she did not quite forget herself, and stopped short without expressing the likeness. “Had he spoken against him at first, I would have obeyed; but I will not destroy myself now for his prejudices.” And Fanny buried her face among the pillows of the sofa, and sobbed aloud.
Lady Selina walked over to the sofa, and stood at the head of it bending over her cousin. She wished to say something to soothe and comfort her, but did not know how; there was nothing soothing or comforting in her nature, nothing soft in her voice; her manner was repulsive, and almost unfeeling; and yet she was not unfeeling. She loved Fanny as warmly as she was capable of loving; she would have made almost any personal sacrifice to save her cousin from grief; she would, were it possible, have borne her sorrows herself; but she could not unbend; she could not sit down by Fanny’s side, and, taking her hand, say soft and soothing things; she could not make her grief easier by expressing hope for the future or consolation for the past. She would have felt that she was compromising truth by giving hope, and dignity by uttering consolation for the loss of that which she considered better lost than retained. Lady Selina’s only recipe was endurance and occupation. And at any rate, she practised what she preached; she was never idle, and she never complained.
As she saw Fanny’s grief, and heard her sobs, she at first thought that in mercy she should now give up the subject of the conversation; but then she reflected that such mercy might be the greatest cruelty, and that the truest kindness would be to prove to Fanny the hopelessness of her passion.