“But she would love you, Mag. My dear fellow, don’t refuse to go. Accept the offer for Julia’s sake—for Cynthia’s and mine, if you like. Don’t be scrupulous about trifles. I tell you she is a dear, sweet girl, and I know your secret. She is heart-whole now, but if she began to learn that there was some one who really loved her, she would fly to him like a young bird does to her mate.”
“Very pretty sophistry, Harry Artingale. When you have bad your fling of life I should advise you to turn Jesuit.”
“Don’t talk stuff, my dear fellow. Take my advice. Go down with me at once to Gatley, and make your hay while the sun shines. I guarantee the result.”
“What, that I shall be kicked out as a scoundrel?”
“Nonsense! kicked out, indeed! That you will win little Julia’s heart.”
“As I should deserve to be,” continued Magnus, without heeding his friend’s words. “No, Harry, I am not blind. I can read Julia Mallow’s heart better, perhaps, than I can read my own, and I know that, whoever wins her love, I shall not be the man. As to her marriage with this wretched butterfly of the day, I can say nothing—do nothing. That rests with the family.”
“James Magnus,” cried Artingale, angrily, “sophistry or no, I wouldn’t stand by and see the woman I loved taken from before my eyes by that contemptible cad. The world might say what it liked about honour and dishonour, and perhaps it might blame you, while, at the same time, it will praise up and deliver eulogies upon the wedding of that poor girl to Perry-Morton. But what is the opinion of such a world as that worth? Come, come—take your opportunity, and win and wear her. Hang it all, Jemmy! don’t say the young Lochinvar was in the wrong.”
“You foolish, enthusiastic boy,” said Magnus, smiling, “so you think I study the sayings or doings of the fragment of our people that you call the world? No, I look elsewhere for the judgment, and, may be, most of all in my own heart. There, say no more about it. I have made up my mind.”
“And I have made up mine,” cried Artingale, sharply, “that you have not the spirit of a man.”
He left the studio hot and angry, went straight to his chambers, and soon after he was on his way to Gatley, having determined to see Cynthia at once for a fresh unselfish discussion upon Julia’s state.