Deprived of the restraint of her mother’s influence, Bettina had progressed with rapidity in her way toward worldliness and selfish ambition, but she had a heart. Her love for her mother had given abundant proof of that, if there were nothing else; and now her heart combated the influence of her head, which decreed that only a fool would reject the great good fortune now held out to her.
In point of fact, Bettina had been influenced more by ambition than by love in engaging herself to Horace, and the gratification of a far more splendid ambition was offered to her in making this other marriage. In it, also, love would play but little part, and this she felt to be decidedly a gain. Yet she was not so far lost to the sentiments of kindness and loyalty, that she had learned from the teaching and example of her mother, as not to hesitate before wounding and humiliating the man who, as she still believed, loved her devotedly. Could it have been proved that she was mistaken in so believing, Lord Hurdly’s case would have been already won.
CHAPTER III
In the end Lord Hurdly prevailed, and that end was swifter in coming than Bettina would have believed to be possible. She had allowed herself a week to wait in London, and for the first day or two of that week she lived in dread lest Lord Hurdly should come to her and renew the arguments which she was quite determined to combat. As the days passed and he did not come, she began to fear that the opportunity of final decision on the momentous question of her choice between these two men would not again be offered her. Her better nature still held her to her pledge to Horace, but already she had come to feel that, but for his disappointment at losing her, she would have accepted Lord Hurdly’s proposal, as it offered a full and immediate fulfilment of her dreams of ambition, and the other postponed these indefinitely, while it promised comparatively little in any other direction.
Toward the end of the week Lord Hurdly called, and, without any reference to his own hopes and intentions, spoke, with what seemed to be a considerable hesitation and regret, of his young cousin’s character and mode of life, which he declared were known, to every one except Bettina, to be exceedingly capricious—even light. He dwelt upon the fact, well known to Bettina, of his earnest desire that his cousin and heir should marry, and gave as a reason for this desire, what he declared to be the accepted fact, that Horace was inclined to a dissipated manner of living, which he hoped marriage might correct.
Poor Bettina! She had believed the young man, to whom she had pledged herself, to be the very opposite of all this. Yet how absolutely ignorant concerning him she really was! And the rector of her church, who was supposed to vouch for him, knew in reality as little as she. How easily she might have been mistaken in him! And yet, and yet, there was a still, small voice in her heart which confirmed her in her resolve to believe in him until she had proof that such a belief was ill founded.
“With his past I have nothing to do,” she said to Lord Hurdly, with a certain show of pride. “If it has been lower than my ideal of him, I regret it; but I am entirely sure that since he has known me and had my promise to be his wife he has been true to all that that promise required of him.”
“This being your conclusion,” Lord Hurdly answered, “you force upon me the necessity of showing you a letter which I have to-day received from a friend in St. Petersburg, and which I would, without strong reason to the contrary, have gladly spared you the pain of reading.” With these words, he handed Bettina a letter.