“Hush, Duke, you know you have no right to speak to me like this. Let us think of poor Constance. How is she to be told the truth?”
“Let her find it out. I shall go back to London as soon as I can; and the affair will drop somehow or another. She will forget all about me.”
“Happy-go-lucky Marmaduke. I think if neglect and absence could make her forget you, you would have been forgotten before this.”
“Yes. You see you must admit that I gave her no reason to suppose I meant anything.”
“I am afraid you have consulted your own humor both in your neglect and your attentions, Duke. The more you try to excuse yourself, the more inexcusable your conduct appears. I do not know how to advise you. If Constance is told, you may some day forget all about your present infatuation; and then a mass of mischief and misery will have been made for nothing. If she is not told, you will be keeping up a cruel deception and wasting her chances of——but she will never care for anybody else.”
“Better do as I say. Leave matters alone for the present. But mind! no speculating on my changing my intentions. I wont marry her.”
“I wish you hadnt told me about it.”
“Well, Marian, I couldnt help it. I know, of course, that you only wanted to make us all happy; but you nursed this match and kept it in Constance’s mind as much as you could. Besides—though it was not your fault—that mistake about Conolly was too serious not to explain. Dont be downcast: I am not blaming you a bit.”
“It seems to me that the worst view of things is always the true one in this world. Nelly and Jasper were right about you.”
“Aha! So they saw what I felt. You cant say I did not make my intentions plain enough to every unbiassed person. The Countess was determined to get Constance off her hands; Constance was determined to have me; and you were determined to stick up for your own notions of love and honeysuckles.”