“I think that men always talk of each other like that, Reginald,” said Dorothy, resting her head upon her hands, and looking straight at the old gentleman. “Each of you likes to think that he has a monopoly of feeling, and that the rest of his kind are as shallow as a milk-pan. And yet it was only last night that you were talking to me about my mother. You told me, you remember, that life had been a worthless thing to you since she was torn from you, which no success had been able to render pleasant. You said more: you said that you hoped that the end was not far off; that you had suffered enough and waited enough; and that, though you had not seen her face for five-and-twenty years, you loved her as wildly as you did the day when she first promised to become your wife.”
Mr. Cardus had risen, and was looking through the glass door at the blooming orchids. Dorothy got up, and, following him, laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“Reginald,” she said, “think! Ernest is about to be robbed of his wife under circumstances curiously like those by which you were robbed of yours. Unless it is prevented, what you have suffered all your life that he will suffer also. Remember you are of the same blood, and, allowing for the difference between your ages, of very much the same temperament too. Think how different life would have been to you if any one had staved off your disaster, and then I am sure you will do all you can to stave off his.”
“Life would have been non-existent for you,” he answered, “for you would never have been born.”
“Ah, well,” she said, with a little sigh, “I am sure I should have got on very well without. I could have spared myself.”
Mr. Cardus was a keen man, and could see as far into the human heart as most.
“Girl,” he said, contracting his white eyebrows and suddenly turning round upon her, “you love Ernest yourself. I have often suspected it; now I am sure you do.”
Dorothy flinched.
“Yes,” she answered, “I do love him. What then?”
“And yet you are advocating my interference to secure his marriage with another woman, a worthless creature who does not know her own mind. You cannot really care about him.”