“Do you understand me, dearest Eleanor? No doubt you do so far, that you comprehend that the women whom men most admire are not the women we, as women ourselves, would wish our sons or brothers to marry. But perhaps you do not comprehend my cause of fear, which is this—for in such matters men do not see as we women do—Graham abhors, in the girls of our time, frivolity and insipidity. Very rightly, you will say. True, but then he is too likely to be allured by contrasts. I have seen him attracted by the very girls we recoil from more than we do from those we allow to be frivolous and insipid. I accused him of admiration for a certain young lady whom you call ‘odious,’ and whom the slang that has come into vogue calls ‘fast;’ and I was not satisfied with his answer, ‘Certainly I admire her; she is not a doll—she has ideas.’ I would rather of the two see Graham married to what men call a doll, than to a girl with ideas which are distasteful to women.”
Lady Janet then went on to question the Duchess about a Miss Asterisk, with whom this tale will have nothing to do, but who, from the little which Lady Janet had seen of her, might possess all the requisites that fastidious correspondent would exact for the wife of her adopted son.
This Miss Asterisk had been introduced into the London world by the Duchess. The Duchess had replied to Lady Janet, that if earth could be ransacked, a more suitable wife for Graham Vane than Miss Asterisk could not be found; she was well born—an heiress; the estates she inherited were in the county of—(viz., the county in which the ancestors of D’Altons and Vanes had for centuries established their whereabout). Miss Asterisk was pretty enough to please any man’s eye, but not with the beauty of which artists rave; well informed enough to be companion to a well-informed man, but certainly not witty enough to supply bons mots to the clubs. Miss Asterisk was one of those women of whom a husband might be proud, yet with whom a husband would feel safe from being talked about.
And in submitting the letter we have read to Graham’s eye, the Duchess had the cause of Miss Asterisk pointedly in view. Miss Asterisk had confided to her friend, that, of all men she had seen, Mr. Graham Vane was the one she would feel the least inclined to refuse.
So when Graham Vane returned the letter to the Duchess, simply saying, “How well my dear aunt divined what is weakest in me!” the Duchess replied quickly, “Miss Asterisk dines here to-morrow; pray come; you would like her if you knew more of her.”
“To-morrow I am engaged—an American friend of mine dines with me; but ‘tis no matter, for I shall never feel more for Miss Asterisk than I feel for Mont Blanc.”
CHAPTER VI.
On leaving his cousin’s house Graham walked on, he scarce knew or cared whither, the image of the beloved dead so forcibly recalled the solemnity of the mission with which he had been intrusted, and which hitherto he had failed to fulfil. What if the only mode by which he could, without causing questions and suspicions that might result in dragging to day the terrible nature of the trust he held, enrich the daughter of Richard King, repair all wrong hitherto done to her, and guard the sanctity of Lady Janet’s home,—should be in that union which Richard King had commended to him while his heart was yet free? In such a case, would not gratitude to the dead, duty to the living, make that union imperative at whatever sacrifice of happiness to himself? The two years to which Richard King had limited the suspense of research were not yet expired. Then, too, that letter of Lady Janet’s,—so tenderly anxious for his future, so clear-sighted as to the elements of his own character in its strength or its infirmities—combined with graver causes to withhold his heart from its yearning impulse, and—no, not steel it against Isaura, but forbid it to realise, in the fair creature and creator of romance, his ideal of the woman to whom an earnest, sagacious, aspiring man commits all the destinies involved in the serene dignity of his hearth. He could not but own that this gifted author—this eager seeker after fame—this brilliant and bold competitor with men on their own stormy battle-ground-was the very person from whom Lady Janet would have warned away his choice. She (Isaura) merge her own distinctions in a husband’s;—she leave exclusively to him the burden of fame and calumny!—she shun “to be talked about!” she who could feel her life to be a success or a failure, according to the extent and the loudness of the talk which it courted!
While these thoughts racked his mind, a kindly hand was laid on his arm, and a cheery voice accosted him. “Well met, my dear Vane! I see we are bound to the same place; there will be a good gathering to-night.”