"Shouldn't I?" the young man said dubiously.
"Of course you wouldn't," Honoria asserted. "Having it in your power to help, and then shirking the responsibility! I won't believe that of you. You are better than that. For think how young she is, and pretty and dependent. She may be driven to do some fatally, foolish thing if she's left unsupported. You must at least know what is going on. You are bound to do so. Moreover, as a mere matter of courtesy, you can't desert me and I intend to stay."
"Do you, though?" faltered Lord Shotover, in tones curiously resembling his father's.
Honoria drew herself up proudly, almost scornfully.
"Yes, I shall stay," she continued. "I am no matchmaker. I have no particular faith in or admiration for marriage——"
"Haven't you, though?" said Lord Shotover. He was slightly surprised, slightly amused, but to his credit be it stated that he put no equivocal construction upon the young lady's frank avowal. He felt a little sorry for Ludovic, that was all, fearing the latter's good fortune was less fully established than he had supposed.
"No, I don't believe very much in marriage—modern, upper-class marriage," she repeated. "And, just precisely on that account, it seems to me all the more degrading and shameful that a girl should risk marrying the wrong man. People talk about a broken engagement as though it was a disgrace. I can't see that. An unwilling, a—a—loveless marriage is the disgrace. And so at the very church door I would urge and encourage a woman to turn back, if she doubted, and have done with the whole thing."
"Upon my word!" murmured Lord Shotover.—The infinite variety of the feminine outlook, the unqualified audacity of feminine action, struck him as bewildering. Talk of women's want of logic! It was their relentless application of logic—as they apprehended it—which staggered him.
Honoria had come close to him. In her excitement she laid her fan on his arm.
"Listen," she said, "listen how Lady Constance is crying. Come—you must know what is happening. You must comfort her."