“That’s no disadvantage at the Bar.”
“Is the Bar your means, or your end?”
“My dear Madame Dalibard, it is my profession.”
“No, your profession is to rise. John Ardworth,” and the low voice swelled in its volume, “you are bold, able, and aspiring; for this, I love you,—love you almost—almost as a mother. Your fate,” she continued hurriedly, “interests me; your energies inspire me with admiration. Often I sit here for hours, musing over your destiny to be, so that at times I may almost say that in your life I live.”
Ardworth looked embarrassed, and with an awkward attempt at compliment he began, hesitatingly: “I should think too highly of myself if I could really believe that you—”
“Tell me,” interrupted Madame Dalibard,—“we have had many conversations upon grave and subtle matters; we have disputed on the secret mysteries of the human mind; we have compared our several experiences of outward life and the mechanism of the social world,—tell me, then, and frankly, what do you think of me? Do you regard me merely as your sex is apt to regard the woman who aspires to equal men,—a thing of borrowed phrases and unsound ideas, feeble to guide, and unskilled to teach; or do you recognize in this miserable body a mind of force not unworthy yours, ruled by an experience larger than your own?”
“I think of you,” answered Ardworth, frankly, “as the most remarkable woman I have ever met. Yet—do not be angry—I do not like to yield to the influence which you gain over me when we meet. It disturbs my convictions, it disquiets my reason; I do not settle back to my life so easily after your breath has passed over it.”
“And yet,” said Lucretia, with a solemn sadness in her voice, “that influence is but the natural power which cold maturity exercises on ardent youth. It is my mournful ad vantage over you that disquiets your happy calm. It is my experience that unsettles the fallacies which you name ‘convictions.’ Let this pass. I asked your opinion of me, because I wished to place at your service all that knowledge of life which I possess. In proportion as you esteem me you will accept or reject my counsels.”
“I have benefited by them already. It is the tone that you advised me to assume that gave me an importance I had not before with that old formalist whose paper I serve, and whose prejudices I shock; it is to your criticisms that I owe the more practical turn of my writings, and the greater hold they have taken on the public.”
“Trifles indeed, these,” said Madame Dalibard, with a half smile. “Let them at least induce you to listen to me if I propose to make your path more pleasant, yet your ascent more rapid.”