"Fanny would love him," Lesley reflected. "But——" Her mind paused at that "But," and she took herself to task for mean jealousy because it was in her head, or her heart, that Fanny would not love him in the way best for his highest development. "She'd spoil and pet him, and make him worse than he is now, because it's a strong tonic, not a diet of sugar that he needs. And if he said a cross word, or looked at another woman, Fanny would cry."
Although Lesley knew that all this was true, still she was afraid that jealousy of a girl looked upon by Lord Loveland as eligible, was really the foundation of her argument.
"I am jealous," she admitted, "although I have no right to be. I could have made him care enough about me to lose his head and say that if I'd promise to marry him, he'd count the world well lost. Oh, yes, I could have done that! I know it. But how would he have felt, the minute the words were out of his mouth? He'd have regretted them bitterly, and thought himself mad. Then, even if I'd said 'no'—which I would have said, of course,—he'd have thought forever with a kind of wild horror of the narrow escape he'd had, and all his memory of me would have been spoiled. Oh, I'm glad, glad, I kept it to friendship from first to last, and laughed at him always! I told him that he'd forget, and that I wanted him to forget; but I don't, and he won't. Just because we were friends, and because I laughed, and was different from the others, he'll remember—even years from now, when he's married, and the world has given him all it can."
Of course Lesley ought not to have been glad that Loveland would remember her as the one dear blessing he had been denied, and think of her when it would be more suitable that he should be thinking of his Marchioness; but she was glad, with a kind of fierce gladness that hurt, and made her young face look strained in the crude white light of the sleeping-car.
"Dear me, Lesley, that must be an exciting book!" complained Aunt Barbara. "I've spoken to you twice without your hearing."
"I'm so sorry, dear," said Lesley.
"What's it about?" asked the elder woman, who had dutifully put away her novel, because it had occurred to her that it was time to go to bed.
"About?" echoed Lesley. "Oh—about love. And marrying the wrong people."
"What a pity!" sighed Aunt Barbara. "I do think stories ought all to end well, don't you?"
"Some can't," said the girl. "It wouldn't be for the best, I suppose, if they did."