"Did she tell you she did not care for me, Grandon?" said I, very humbly.
"She told me to forgive you, and love you as I used to, God help me!" burst out Grandon, and he covered his face with his hands. "Frank," he said, "she is an angel of whom neither you nor I is worthy; but oh, spare her! Don't, for God's sake hold her up to the pity and curiosity of London. I would do anything on earth she told me; but what spell have you thrown over her that in spite of your heartless conduct she should still implore me to love and cherish you? How can I obey her in this when your acts are so utterly at variance with all that is noble and honourable? I have at least one cause for gratitude," he continued, in a calmer tone, "and that is, that the doubt which would force itself upon me when I vainly tried to account for her conduct in accepting you so suddenly has been removed."
I had discovered what I wanted, for in spite of every effort to conceal it, I detected a mixture of jealousy and of triumph in Grandon's last speech. Ursula, in her moment of agony, had unconsciously allowed him to perceive that he alone was loved, and had urged him still to love and cherish me, because as an irresponsible being she had thought me more than ever in need of sympathy and protection For a moment I wavered in my resolution. Should I open my heart and give my dearest friend a confidence which should justify me in his eyes, at the risk of destroying the project I had formed on that night when, walking home from my interview with Lady Broadhem, I had determined to devote my energies to the happiness of others and not of myself? or should I maintain that flippant, heartless exterior which seemed for the time necessary to the success of my plans? As usual, my mind made itself up while I was doubting what to do, and in spite of myself I said jauntily, "Well, now that you know that she cares about you and not about me, I suppose you have nothing to do but to return her affection?"
"I have done that for some time," he replied, "but you know how perfectly hopeless our love is; and yet," and his voice deepened and his face flushed with enthusiasm, "I am happier loving hopelessly and knowing that I am loved, than I have ever been before. Forgive me, Frank, but I do not feel for you as I should have done had you behaved differently. You had no right to let me suppose that she had accepted you when the subject had never been breathed between you. Your conscience must tell you that you have acted in an unworthy manner towards us both."
"Grandon," I said, sententiously, "my conscience works on a system utterly incomprehensible to an ordinary intelligence, and I am quite satisfied with it. I will have a metaphysical discussion with you on the matter on some other occasion. Meantime you think Ursula has decided on preferring the ruin and disgrace of the Broadhem family to a mariage de convenance either with me or any one else?"
"I did not know it was a question of disgrace," said Grandon, "and I am quite sure that Lady Ursula will do the right thing. I would rather not discuss the subject any further; we shall certainly not agree, and I am afraid that we might become more widely estranged than I should wish. Here is breakfast. It was you who last asked me to bury this unhappy subject, it is my turn now to make the same request. I wish to heaven it had never arisen between us."
"What a lucky fellow you are!" said I, looking at him with the eye of a philosopher; "now you would never imagine yourself to be one of the most enviable men in London, with the most charming of women and the most devoted of friends ready to sacrifice themselves at your feet—she incomprise, I incompris."
"Don't trifle," said Grandon, sternly, interrupting me; "my patience is not inexhaustible."
"Luckily mine is," said I, with my mouth full of grilled salmon, "otherwise I should not be the right stuff for a social missionary. Apropos, you have never asked me what I have been doing in that line; nor told me what you thought of the long letter I wrote you from Flityville. Did you get me the answers to those questions?"
"No," he replied, "I must honestly tell you, Frank, that it pains me to discuss so serious a subject with one who makes so fair and earnest a pretence of having deep convictions as you do, and whose acts are so diametrically opposed to them; and now I must be off, for I have a committee of the House to attend."