"I don't think you'd be very rich, dear; it seems to me he must spend every penny he makes, even if he does get a thousand pounds for four nights sometimes. Besides, if you mean to marry him just for what he can give you, I'm afraid you'd be very miserable. You're not a girl, I know, and you must judge for yourself in these things, but I don't think any amount of money would make you satisfied with what you'd done if you don't care for him—and I'm sure I don't see how you can! When I married your poor father——"
"When you married father he had nothing, I know. And you've had nothing ever since. The children of people who marry on nothing are seldom as sentimental as their parents were. You were brought up in a comfortable home, and so you were romantic, and said, 'Money's the least thing;' I was brought up in a lodging-house, and so I'm practical, and put money before everything else. I think," she exclaimed, "I think it's wicked that people who make improvident marriages should brag of the folly to their poor children afterwards!"
"I am not bragging, dear. But when a woman has loved her husband, she never admits that their marriage was a folly, even in her own thoughts. A man——" She sighed. "A man, I am afraid, sometimes does. As I say, you're not a girl, and you must know your own mind, but the idea seems awful to me; I would never have believed you could think of doing such a thing."
Ownie flushed, and her shoe tapped the floor irritably. "Just because he is black," she muttered. "Where is your religion? I thought you said just now that in the sight of Heaven all men were equal?"
"In Heaven, no doubt, he will be as white as the rest of us," returned Mrs. Tremlett, after a slight pause. "But in the meantime he's a nigger, and I can't think it would be right."
Her daughter did not reply; nor did the elder woman summon courage to recur to the matter. She was, however, relieved on the morrow and the next day to notice that her remonstrance had borne fruit and that Ownie's visits to the drawing-room were discontinued. Lee, who passed the two days in hourly expectation of them, was first restless, and then enraged. The besetting tendency of the negro in his intercourse with Europeans is to take affront, and he told himself that her neglect was an insult which she would never have dared to put upon an Englishman. He left Brighton this time without any adieu, and he was absent for longer than usual.
There were two reasons for his going back when he did. When women say of another woman—as they are often heard to say—that there is nothing in her to explain infatuation, they babble, for there is no young woman, however commonplace, who may not appear unique to some man. One of Lee's reasons was, that his desire to see Ownie again was fevering him; the other was, that he wanted to know if she meant to occupy the box that he had kept for her.
He returned late, and he had no hope of seeing her that night, but he spent the following morning between the windows—his hat and fur coat on the table—waiting for her to leave the house. She had no sooner done so than he descended the stairs with elaborate carelessness, and manoeuvred until they came face to face.
"Oh, Mr. Lee," she said. "So you are back again!"
His resolve to ignore his grievance succumbed to the temptation to reproach her for it.