“They are passionately in love to-day, and speaking unkindly of me to-morrow. Is that love?”
The earl did not feel competent to argue the point, so he wisely evaded the question by saying:
“Well, let us hope that you will be able to return the affection of some one before many months are past—Viscount Rivington, for instance. He is young, handsome, and comes of a great family. He will be a duke some day, and is very much in love with you.”
“So that these men are of ancient lineage, papa, it does not seem to concern you whether it is possible for me to love them or not,” Lady Elaine replied.
“My dear, I sincerely hope that you could not bring yourself to care for what is termed a man of the people,” the earl exclaimed, in alarm.
“And why not, if he were a gentleman?” laughed Elaine. “There, papa, why should we talk of these things? I like Viscount Rivington better than any one else, because he does not rave about broken hearts and suicide; but as for the love that poets sing about, I fear that I am incapable of experiencing it. In my early girlhood it was a beautiful dream that lay before me like an enchanted garden. Now I am becoming worldly and skeptical. I have not met my prince, and fear that my ideal lives only in my dreams.”
“What nonsense these poets put into the heads of girls!” my lord remarked. “Their trash does an incalculable amount of harm, and ought to be made a bonfire of. However, I am glad that you are beginning to see the value of it, my child. Try and think well of Rivington. He is a capital fellow.”
After that Lady Elaine treated the viscount kindly, and he at once fancied that he was her favored suitor. Then Sir Harold Annesley appeared, and the beautiful Elaine knew that her prince had come at last! With one glance Sir Harold won this peerless creature, and to all his other honors was added this victory. And yet he was not happy!
No sooner was the prize assured than he began to make himself and Elaine miserable by his quixotic notions of the love of twin souls. The words of the Earl of Seabright haunted him when he spoke of Viscount Rivington in connection with Lady Elaine, and while congratulating him, his cousin Margaret had expressed astonishment that the earl’s daughter could so quickly transfer her affections from one to the other.
“But it is not true,” Sir Harold had said; “she never cared for the viscount.”