“Yes,” she said, gravely. “I forgot that. The hateful money!” The words burst from her with fierce energy. “What does it matter? Do you think you would be any the happier if you had—yes”—bitterly—“all my money? If you love her you can tell her so, and if she loves you—marry her right away.”
Norman stared at her breathlessly, then laughed ruefully.
“You’d better let Lord Selvaine—he’s one of her guardians, you know—hear you offering that advice. He’d have a fit—no, he wouldn’t, because nothing ever throws him over; but he’d smile and ask me when I thought of going back to my lunatic asylum.”
“And you could tell him to go to his,” said Esmeralda, her eyes flashing. “You could tell him that the people who are mad are those who sell themselves and their wretched little souls for money. Money—money! I hate the sound of it. And you are in love with Lilias?” she said, after a pause, recovering herself, and with a little smile.
Norman looked rather ashamed of himself, and Esmeralda laughed a little wearily.
“There’s no occasion to look like that,” she said, in a way that reminded him of Three Star. “Why shouldn’t you be in love with her or any one else?” She laughed. “You don’t think I mind?” for Norman still looked uncomfortable. “Why should you keep on remembering what—what happened ever so long ago—when I’d quite forgotten it?” she added, rather cruelly. “And I don’t see how you could help falling in love with her, and I think you’ll be a very lucky young man if you can persuade her to fall in love with you. And mind,” she went on, almost fiercely, “if you can get her, marry her! Never mind being a pauper, never mind people telling you that because you haven’t any money of your own you ought to marry some wretched girl who has. Shall I tell you what would happen if you did?”
Norman stared at her as she stood before him with pale face and somber eyes, behind which lay something which mystified him.
“She’ll hate you, and you’ll hate yourself, and wish that you’d married the girl you loved, though you’d only a loaf of bread to share with her!”
Norman was almost frightened, and seeing it, Esmeralda controlled herself and forced a laugh.
“You see I’m an old married woman, Norman,” she said, with a reckless gayety. “And so I’m allowed to bully you. See?” She almost ran away from him, and left Norman with his hat tilted far back on his head and a bewildered look in his blue eyes; also the conviction that no man alive could ever understand a woman.