"I 'm sure he is a most amiable person; he is exceedingly clever and accomplished—"
"I don't care a brass bodkin for all that," broke in K. I. "A man may be as wise as the bench of bishops, and be a bad husband."
"Let me talk to Mary Anne," said I. It's only a female heart, Molly, understands these cases; for men discuss them as if they were matters of reason! And with that I marched her off with me to my own room.
I need n't tell you all I said, nor what she replied to me; but this much I will say, a more sensible girl I never saw. She took in the whole of our situation at once. She perceived that there was no saying how long K. I. might be induced to remain abroad; it might be, perhaps, to-morrow, or next day, that he'd decide to go back to Ireland. What a position we 'd be in, then! "I don't doubt," says she, "but if time were allowed me, I could do better than this. With the knowledge I have now of life, I feel very confident; but if we are to be marched off before the campaign begins, mamma, how are we to win our laurels?" Them's her words, Molly, and they express her meaning beautifully.
We agreed at last that the best thing was to accept the invitation to the castle, and when we saw the place, and the way of living, we could then decide on the offer of marriage.
If I could only repeat to you the remarks Mary Anne made about this, you 'd see what a girl she was, and what a wonderful degree of intelligence she possesses. Even on the point that K. I. himself raised a doubt,—the difference of nationality and language,—she summed up the whole question in a few words. Her observation was, that this very circumstance was rather an advantage than otherwise, "as offering a barrier against the over-intimacy and over-familiarity that is the bane of married life."
"The fact is, mamma," said she, "people do not conform to each other. They make a show of doing so, and they become hypocrites,—great or little ones, as their talents decide for them,—but their real characters remain at bottom unchanged. Now, married to a foreigner, a woman need not even affect to assume his tastes and habits. She may always follow her own, and set them down, whatever they be, to the score of her peculiar nationality."
She is really, Molly, an astonishing girl, and in all that regards life and knowledge of mankind, I never met her equal. As to Caroline, she never could have made such a remark. The advantages of the Continent are clean thrown away on her; she knows no more of the world than the day we left Dodsborough. Indeed, I sometimes half regret that we did n't leave her behind with the Doolans; for I observe that whenever foreign travel fails in inculcating new refinement and genteel notions, it is sure to strengthen all old prejudices, and suggest a most absurd attachment to one's own country; and when that happens to be Ireland, Molly, I need scarcely say how injurious the tendency is! It's very dreadful, my dear, but it's equally true, whenever anything is out of fashion, in bad taste, vulgar, or common, you 're sure to hear it called Irish, though, maybe, it never crossed the Channel; and out of self-defence one is obliged to adopt the custom.
On one point Mary Anne and myself were both agreed. It is next to impossible for any one but a banker's daughter, or in the ballet, to get a husband in the peerage at home. The nobility, with us, are either very cunning or very foolish. As to the gentry class, they never think of them at all. The consequence is, that a girl who wishes for a title must take a foreigner. Now, Molly, German nobility is mightily like German silver,—it has only a look of the real article; but if you can't afford the right thing, it is better than the vulgar metal!
Mary Anne has declared, over and over again, that nothing would induce her to be Mrs. Anybody. As she says, "Your whole life is passed in a struggle, if not heralded by a designation, even though it only be 'Madame.'" And sure nobody knows this better than I do. Has n't the odious name weighed me down for years past?