“You are cruel, you are unjust,” said Dalibard, falteringly. “If I once presumed for a moment, have I repeated my offence? But,” he added hurriedly, “in me,—much as you appear to despise me,—in me, at least, you would have risked none of the dangers that beset you if you seriously set your heart on Mainwaring.”
“You think my uncle would be proud to give my hand to M. Olivier Dalibard?”
“I think and I know,” answered the Provencal, gravely, and disregarding the taunt, “that if you had deigned to render me—poor exile that I am!—the most enviable of men, you had still been the heiress of Laughton.”
“So you have said and urged,” said Lucretia, with evident curiosity in her voice; “yet how, and by what art,—wise and subtle as you are,—could you have won my uncle’s consent?”
“That is my secret,” returned Dalibard, gloomily; “and since the madness I indulged is forever over; since I have so schooled my heart that nothing, despite your sarcasm, save an affectionate interest which I may call paternal rests there,—let us pass from this painful subject. Oh, my dear pupil, be warned in time; know love for what it really is, in the dark and complicated history of actual life,—a brief enchantment, not to be disdained, but not to be considered the all-in all. Look round the world; contemplate all those who have married from passion: ten years afterwards, whither has the passion flown? With a few, indeed, where there is community of object and character, new excitements, new aims and hopes, spring up; and having first taken root in passion, the passion continues to shoot out in their fresh stems and fibres. But deceive yourself not; there is no such community between you and Mainwaring. What you call his goodness, you will learn hereafter to despise as feeble; and what in reality is your mental power he soon, too soon, will shudder at as unwomanly and hateful.”
“Hold!” cried Lucretia, tremulously. “Hold! and if he does, I shall owe his hate to you,—to your lessons; to your deadly influence!”
“Lucretia, no; the seeds were in you. Can cultivation force from the soil that which it is against the nature of the soil to bear?”
“I will pluck out the weeds! I will transform myself!”
“Child, I defy you!” said the scholar, with a smile that gave to his face the expression his son had conveyed to it. “I have warned you, and my task is done.” With that he bowed, and leaving her, was soon by the side of Sir Miles St. John; and the baronet and his librarian, a few moments after, entered the house and sat down to chess.
But during the dialogues we have sketched, we must not suppose that Sir Miles himself had been so wholly absorbed in the sensual gratification bestowed upon Europe by the immortal Raleigh as to neglect his guest and kinsman.