She bit her lip, and drew her features together as if she had been stung, when on the following afternoon, in the Bois de Boulogne, Vicomte Lascar informed her, with his insipid smile, that he had that morning met De Rohan at the railway station, evidently en route for Hungary, adding, for the Princess was an excellent linguist, and Lascar prided himself much on his English, "'Ome, sweet 'ome, no place like 'ome."
CHAPTER XVII
THE COMMON LOT
"And so, you see, my dear Egerton, it is out of the question. I own to a great liking for your character. I think you behaved yesterday like a trump. I am too old for romance, and all that, but I can understand your feeling, my boy, and I am sorry for you. The objection I have named would alone be sufficient. Let it never be mentioned again. Your father was my oldest friend, and I hope you will not think it necessary to break with us; but marriage is a serious affair, and indeed is not to be thought of."
"No hope, Sir Harry?" I gasped out; "years hence, if I could win fame, distinction, throw a cloak of honour over this accursed brand, give her a name to be proud of, is there no hope?"
"None," replied Sir Harry; "these things are better settled at once. It is far wiser not to delude yourself into the notion that, because you are a disappointed man now, you are destined to become a great one hereafter. Greatness grows, Vere, just like a cabbage or a cauliflower, and must be tended and cultivated with years of labour and perseverance; you cannot pluck it down with one spring, like an apple from a bough. No, no, my lad; you will get over this disappointment, and be all the better for it. I am sorry to refuse you, but I must, Vere, distinctly, and for the last time. Besides, I tell you in confidence, I have other views for Constance, so you see it is totally out of the question. You may see her this afternoon, if you like. She is a good child, and will do nothing in disobedience to her father. Farewell, Vere, I am sorry for you, but the thing's done."
So I walked out of the Baronet's room in the unenviable character of a disappointed suitor, and he went back to his farm book and his trainer's accounts, as coolly as if he had just been dismissing a domestic; whilst I--my misery was greater than I could bear--his last words seemed to scorch me. "I should get over it--I should be the better for it." And I felt all the time that my heart was breaking; and then, "he had other views for Constance;" not only must she never be mine, but I must suffer the additional pang of feeling that she belongs to another. "Would to God," I thought, "that we had sunk together yesterday, never to rise again!"
I went to look for her in the shrubbery: I knew where I should find her; there was an old summer-house that we two had sat in many a time before, and I felt sure Constance would be there. She rose as I approached it: she must have seen by my face that it was all over. She put her hand in mine, and, totally unmanned, I bent my head over it, and burst into a flood of tears, like a child. I remember to this day the very pattern of the gown she wore; even now I seem to hear the soft, gentle accents in which she reasoned and pleaded with me, and strove to mitigate my despair.
"I have long thought it must come to this, Vere," she said, with her dark, melancholy eyes looking into my very soul; "I have long thought we have both been much to blame, you to speak, and I to listen, as we have done: now we have our punishment. Vere, I will not conceal from you I suffer much. More for your sake than my own. I cannot bear to see you so miserable. You to whom I owe so much, so many happy hours, and yesterday my very life. Oh, Vere, try to bear it like a man."
"I cannot, I cannot," I sobbed out; "no hope, nothing to look forward to, but a cheerless, weary life, and then to be forgotten. Oh that I had died with you, Constance, my beloved one, my own!"