This was folded up into a tiny note, and with it Julius marched into the drawing-room to seek some means of delivering it. He found Rose playing with Shot, and stooping down to join her in that play, he easily contrived to slip it into her hand, just as the lamp was brought in. She blushed deeply, and her little bosom panted with hurrying feelings; but making an effort she ran out of the room, declaring it was time to dress for dinner.
She read the letter with intense eagerness, and finished it twice before she could make out distinctly anything beyond the delightful fact that Julius had at last declared himself. On calming her agitation a little, and deliberately reading the letter once more, she felt a certain impatience at that passage which attributed the declaration to what she had said during their ride. For the first time, it then struck her that she had given him too broad a hint. Aware of his backwardness, and of his exaggerated notion of woman's desire for beauty, she was anxious to undeceive him on that point, and now saw that she had, perhaps, overstepped the bounds of maidenly reserve.
Now Rose, though a darling little girl, was not without her imperfections; and wilfulness was among them. She would do and say strange things, because she chose to do and say them; but you were not to draw any absolute conclusions from them, you were not to hold her to her words unless she also chose to be held to them; she called that taking an advantage of her. In the present case she was very anxious to tell Julius that she loved him; she had gone so far as to tell him that his want of beauty would be no disqualification; yet when he availed himself of her words, and "spake upon that hint," she rebelled, and was impatient at such an advantage being taken of her "unguarded language."
Meanwhile, the dressing-bell had rung, and no one was in the drawing-room except Marmaduke and Mrs. Meredith Vyner, who were in the midst of a somewhat bitter and mutually reproachful conversation respecting the honesty and constancy of the two sexes.
"Men are so brutal," she said; "they always demand undying constancy from us—"
"And never get it——"
"And even when perhaps jealousy, anger, or despair have driven us into seeking elsewhere for relief from our outraged affections, they sneer and talk of our frivolity and incapacity for an enduring passion."
"Well, well, it is easy to talk of jealousy driving a woman to extremity, but there must be shown some cause for that jealousy. Mere absence, mere inferiority in position, is sometimes enough to suggest ample cause for jealousy. An absent lover thinks incessantly of his mistress; a rich old lover makes his appearance; whereupon the engaged lady suddenly becomes jealous of her absent swain, and, driven to desperation, marries the rich old lover!"
Nothing could better please Mrs. Vyner than the turn taken by the conversation, which, in its generality of expression and covert significance, best answered her purpose of justification, without seeming to justify herself.
"I agree with you. There must be ampler cause shown. But if the absent lover suddenly ceases to write, and reports arise that he is very assiduous in his attentions elsewhere, if to this silence, confirmed by these reports—if to the jealous rage, which those who love ardently must feel when they are betrayed, be added the temptation of vengeance in the shape of a brilliant match, then, I think, we should not blame a woman's inconstancy, so much as we should pity her fate. Were she to marry a young and handsome man, she might be supposed to love him; but if, as in the case supposed by you, the new lover be old, then it is a proof that whatever wild motives may have prompted her wild act, inconstancy in her affections had nothing to do with it."