At any other moment his words must have prompted her to have inquired into their unexpressed significance, but shock seemed to suspend her every faculty. She found not a word to say, and experienced the greatest difficulty in preventing herself from bursting into tears. He turned his head, and said, with a smile, “What an ogre I must appear to you, to have so taken your breath away, Cilly! Don’t stare at me so unbelievingly! You shall marry your poet; my hand on it!”
She put out her own mechanically, managed to speak two words, “Thank you!” and ran out of the room, unable to say more, or to control her emotion.
She sought the seclusion of her own bedchamber, her thoughts in such disorder that it was long before her agitation had at all subsided.
Never had opposition been withdrawn at so inopportune a moment; never had a victory seemed more empty! Almost without her knowledge, her sentiments, during the “past weeks, had been undergoing a change. Now that her brother had accorded her his permission to marry the man of her choice, she discovered that her feeling for Augustus had been more than the infatuation Charles had always thought it. Opposition had fostered it, leading her into the fatal error of almost publicly announcing her unalterable determination to marry Augustus or no one. Lord Charlbury, so superior to Augustus in every way, had accepted her rejection of his suit and had turned his attention elsewhere; and whatever unacknowledged hope she might have cherished of seeing his affections reanimate toward her must now be quite at an end. To confess to Charles that he had been right from the start, and she most miserably mistaken, was impossible. She had gone too far; nothing now remained to her but to accept the fate she had insisted on bringing on herself; and, for pride’s sake, to show a smiling face to the world.
She showed it first to Sophy, resolutely begging her to felicitate her upon her happiness. Sophy was thunderstruck. “Good God!” she exclaimed, stupefied. “Charles will promote this match?”
“He does not wish me to be unhappy. He never wished it. Now that he is convinced that I am in earnest he will place no bar in my way. Indeed, he was so good as to promise that he would speak to Papa for me! That must decide it. Papa always does what Charles desires him to.” She saw that her cousin was regarding her fixedly, and continued quickly, “I have never known Charles kinder! He spoke of the misery of being forced into a marriage against one’s inclination. He said I should not spend a lifetime of regret. Oh, Sophy, can it be that he no longer cares for Eugenia? The suspicion cannot but obtrude!”
“Good gracious, he never did care for her!” replied Sophy scornfully. “And if he had but just discovered it, that is no reason for — ” She broke off, darting a swift glance at Cecilia and perceiving much more than her cousin would have wished. “Well! This is a day of miracles indeed!” she said. “Of course I felicitate you with all my heart, dearest Cecy! When is your betrothal to be announced?”
“Oh, not until Augustus is settled in — in some respectable occupation!” Cecilia answered. “But that will not be long, I am persuaded! Or his tragedy may take, you know.”
Sophy agreed to this without a blink and listened with an assumption of interest to Cecilia’s various schemes for the future. That these were couched in somewhat melancholy terms she allowed to pass without comment, merely repeating her congratulations and wishing her cousin every happiness.
But behind these mendacities her brain was working swiftly. She perfectly understood the fix Cecilia was in, and never for an instant thought of wasting her breath in expostulation. Something far more drastic than expostulation was needed in this case, for no lady who had entered into an engagement in the teeth of parental opposition could be expected to cry off from it the instant she had gained the sanction she had so insistently demanded.