‘I feel perfectly certain that he is very clever, and that some day he will make a mark in the world. I’m sure there is no doubt about that. You should be very proud to have won the love of such a man, for I am sure that you will have reason to be proud to be his wife, some day.’
‘Eh, Miss Askam!’
Ada was, as she would have said herself, ‘taken aback’ by Miss Askam’s earnestness, and especially by the bold way in which she prophesied great things, and that, too, before the event. It had never occurred to her to look at it in that light before. Her father always said how steady and ‘decent’ Roger was; that meant, she knew, that he was expected always to have an income and a comfortable home for her, Ada. But her mother looked down upon him; and she herself, though she had been pleased and flattered with his attentions at first, and was aware that many another girl in Bradstane would have lent no unwilling ear to his courting, had lately begun to see the possibility of a future, far more highly coloured and richly gilded than any that Roger Camm had to offer her; a future more like the state of things depicted in ‘The Fate of the Falconers,’ in which the heir of an ancient and lordly house, handsome, picturesque, with the manners of a prince, and the sins of a Corsair upon his soul, became enslaved by the charms of a young girl, her own age, and, so far as she had gathered from the description, very much resembling herself in personal appearance. A secret marriage had followed; a little romantic adversity, in which lovers and flattery, and old castles and devoted retainers, of whom, she thought, old Barlow at Thorsgarth might stand as a very fair specimen, had never been missing. These romantic adjuncts had never been wanting in the story; and then came the gradual working-round, which in the end left the lovely Adela a countess, with crowds of servants, jewels, a box at the opera, and all London raving about her beauty. That—or something as near it as circumstances allowed—was the life for her, thought Ada. That was the sphere she had been born to grace; and the rapture of feeling that for her sake a man would give up his evil ways, was infinitely beyond any prosaic union with one who was not distinguished by having evil ways to give up. But here Miss Askam’s voice again disturbed her.
‘Yes, I am quite sure of it,’ she said, in the same straightforward, earnest way. ‘I think you ought to be very proud that he has chosen you; and as for giving up reading things which he disapproves of, you surely cannot hesitate about that. You must know that he is very clever, and has had a great deal more experience than you have.’
‘Oh yes.’ Ada was quite ready to own that. It was what she was quite sure of. The only thing was, she was not sure that cleverness and experience, like Roger’s, made their owners altogether more agreeable. At any rate, they became oppressive when frequently used to point out to her her shortcomings. That was not her idea of the functions of a lover; it was not the way in which the heroes in Laura Loveday’s novels behaved. Those gentlemen had eyes of fire and lips of flame; they always managed to appear suddenly by moonlight, and the scenery in which they moved always happened to be of a picturesque kind,—balconies and verandahs forming a great feature in every landscape. They never alluded to Macaulay’s ‘History;’ and while Roger had once told her how glad he was that she had discarded her chignon, which he went so far as to characterise as a ‘nasty lump,’ Miss Loveday’s heroes were in the habit of pushing back the tresses from their mistress’s brows, and murmuring words of adoration in her ears. Yet here was Miss Askam telling her she ought to be proud to be loved by this fault-finding man; perhaps she ought to be proud even of being found fault with. She would ask; and she did.
‘But, Miss Askam, Roger is always picking holes in what I do. It isn’t in books alone, but about everything, and always—at least, very often. I suppose I ought to be proud of that, too, since he’s so very clever, you say.’
‘You say!’ Eleanor perceived from these words that she had wasted her breath, and privately felt that it served her right for ever entering into such a discussion. But Ada was looking at her with intense earnestness, and Eleanor asked, ‘Do you really wish me to give you my opinion on such a subject?’
‘Indeed, I wish you would.’
‘Well, in a way, I think you ought to be proud to be even found fault with by him. He would not do it if he did not care very much for you, and also feel sure that you had it in you to grow into something higher and better.’[better.’]
‘Well, I don’t know. Roger was satisfied enough when I said I would have him,’ said Ada, discontentedly.