“Mother! You are not weakening? You will not retreat now that you have gone so far?”
“I have no intention of retreating. But I wish that I had stayed in New York and fought it out there. It was a shocking and heartless thing to run away and leave him like that, a brutal and insulting thing; but when he told me that he should pull Mr. Creighton through, and speak to the Duke, this move seemed the only one that could save the game.”
“And a very wise one it was. Father would have beaten you in the end—surely; he can do anything with you. I think it is humiliating to be part and parcel of a man like that.”
“You know nothing of love. You are fascinated by a man who has the magnetism of indifference; that is all.”
“I am quite sure that I love Bertie,” said Miss Forbes with decision. “I have analyzed myself thoroughly, and I feel convinced that it is love—although I thank my stars that I could never in any circumstances be so besottedly in love with a man as you are with dear papa. I do not pretend to deny that I am pleased, very pleased, at the idea of being a Duchess. All we American girls of the best families have good blue English blood in our veins, and it seems to me that in accepting the best that the mother country can offer us, we should feel no more flattered or excited than any English-born girl in the same circumstances. For the nouveau riche—the fungi—of course it is ridiculous, and also lamentable: they muddy a pure stream, and they are chromos in a jewelled frame. But there are many of us that should feel a certain gratitude to Providence that we are permitted to save from ruin the grand old families whose ancestors and ours played together, perhaps, as children. To me it is a sacred duty as well as a very great pleasure. Papa’s English ancestors may not have been as smart as yours, but he has seven generations of education and refinement, position and wealth behind him in the United States; he is the chief figure in the aristocracy of the United States; and in time he must see things as we do.”
To this edifying homily Mrs. Forbes gave scant attention. She was tormented with conjectures of her husband’s scorn and displeasure, picturing his loneliness. Sometimes she awoke suddenly in the night, lost the drift for the moment of conversation in company, saw a blank wall instead of the mise en scène of the play, her brain flaring with the enigma: “Will life ever be quite the same again?” She had had a second object in leaving New York abruptly: she believed that her husband could not stand the test of her absence and anger. But in the excitement and rush of those two days she had not looked into her deeper knowledge of him. She had known him very well. It was a dangerous experiment to wound a great nature, to shatter the delicate partition between illusion and an analytical mind.
“What a dreadful sigh!” expostulated Miss Forbes. “It is bad for the heart to sigh like that. I don’t think you are very well. I don’t think, lovely as you look, that you have been quite up to mark since we left New York.”
“I suppose it is because I was ill crossing; I never was before, you know. And then it is the first time in my life that I have been away from both your father and mammy. I am so used to being taken care of that I feel as if I were doing the wrong thing all the time, and Marie is merely a toilette automaton. This morning the clothes were half off the bed when I woke up, and the window was open; and yesterday Marie gave me the wrong wrap, and I was cold all the afternoon.”
“Good heavens, mother!” cried Miss Forbes. “Fancy being thirty-nine and such a baby. I feel years older than you.”
“And immeasurably superior. I suppose the petting and care I have had all my life would bore you. Well, your cold independent nature often makes me wonder what are its demands upon happiness. Does Bertie ever kiss you?”