“I am sure you can do anything, Adelaide, and I will teach singing. I can sing.”
“Pooh! Do you suppose that because you can take C in alt. you are competent to teach singing? You don’t know how to sing yourself yet. Your face is your fortune. So is mine my fortune. So is Stella’s her fortune. You have enjoyed yourself all your life; you have had seventeen years of play and amusement, and now you behave like a baby. You refuse to endure a little discomfort, as the price of placing yourself and your family forever out of the reach of trouble and trial. Why, if you were Sir Peter’s wife, you could do what you liked with him. I don’t say anything about myself; but oh! May, I am ashamed of you, I am ashamed of you! I thought you had more in you. Is it possible that you are nothing but a romp—nothing but a vulgar tomboy? Good Heaven! If the chance had been mine!”
“What would you have done?” I whispered, subdued for the moment, but obstinate in my heart as ever.
“I am nobody now; no one knows me. But if I had had the chance that you have had to-night, in another year I would have been known and envied by half the women in England. Bah! Circumstances are too disgusting, too unkind!”
“Oh! Adelaide, nothing could have made up for being tied to that man,” said I, in a small voice; “and I am not ambitious.”
“Ambitious! You are selfish—downright, grossly, inordinately selfish. Do you suppose no one else ever had to do what they did not like? Why did you not stop to think instead of rushing away from the thing like some unreasoning animal?”
“Adelaide! Sir Peter! To marry him?” I implored in tears. “How could I? I should die of shame at the very thought. Who could help seeing that I had sold myself to him?”
“And who would think any the worse of you? And what if they did? With fifteen thousand a year you may defy public opinion.”
“Oh, don’t! don’t!” I cried, covering my face with my hands. “Adelaide, you will break my heart!”