"I want to give my heart to the man who gives me his."
"And what, in the name of all that's preposterous, is to prevent you giving Gustave Lenoble your heart?"
"I cannot tell you."
"No, nor any one else. But let us have no more of this nonsense. If you call yourself a daughter of mine, you will marry Gustave Lenoble. If not—"
The Captain found himself brought to a sudden stop in his unconscious paraphrase of Signor Capulet's menace to his recalcitrant daughter, Juliet. With what threat could the noble Horatio terrify his daughter to obedience? Before you talk of turning your rebellious child out of doors, you must provide a home from which to cast her. Captain Paget remembered this, and was for the moment reduced to sudden and ignominious silence. And yet there must surely be some way of bringing this besotted young woman to reason.
He sat for some minutes in silence, with his head leaning on his hand, his face hidden from Diana. This silence, this attitude, so expressive of utter despondency, touched her more keenly than his anger. She knew that he was mean and selfish, that it was of his own loss he thought; and yet she pitied him. He was old and helpless and miserable; so much the more pitiable because of his selfishness and meanness. For the heroic soul there is always some comfort; but for the grovelling nature suffering knows no counterbalance. The ills that flesh is heir to seem utterly bitter when there is no grand spirit to dominate the flesh, and soar triumphant above the regions of earthly pain. Captain Paget's mind, to him, was not a kingdom. He could not look declining years of poverty in the face; he was tired of work. The schemes and trickeries of his life were becoming very odious to him; they were for the most part worn out, and had ceased to pay. Of course he had great hopes, in any event, from Gustave Lenoble; but those hopes were dependent on Gustave's inheritance of John Haygarth's estate. He wanted something more tangible than this—he wanted immediate security; and his daughter's marriage with Gustave would have given him that security, and still grander hopes for the future. He had fancied himself reigning over the vassals of Côtenoir, a far more important personage than the real master of that château. He had pictured to himself a pied-à-terre in Paris which it might be agreeable for him to secure, for existence in Normandy might occasionally prove ennuyeux. These things were what he meant when he talked of a haven for his declining years; and against the daughter who, for some caprice of her own, could hinder his possession of these things, he had no feeling but anger.
Diana compassionated this weak old man, to whose lips the cup of prosperity had seemed so near, from whose lips her hand had thrust it. He had been promised a home, comfort, respectability, friendship—"all that should accompany old age"—and she had prevented the fulfilment of the promise. Heaven knows how pure her motives had been; but as she watched that drooping head, with its silvered hair, she felt that she had been cruel.
"Papa," she began presently, laying her hand caressingly upon her father's neck; but he pushed aside the timid, caressing hand—"papa, you think me very unkind, only because I have done what I believe to be right; indeed it is so, papa dear. In what I said to Gustave Lenoble this evening, I was governed only by my sense of right."
"Indeed!" cried the Captain, with a strident laugh; "and where did you pick up your sense of right, madam, I should like to know? From what Methodist parson's hypocritical twaddle have you learnt to lay down the law to your poor old father about the sense of right? 'Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land,' miss, that's what your Bible teaches you; but the Bible has gone out of fashion, I dare say, since I was a young man; and your model young woman of the present generation taunts her father with her sense of right. Will your sense of right be satisfied when you hear of your father rotting in the old-men's ward of a workhouse, or dying on the London stones?"
"I am not unfeeling, papa. With all my heart I pity you; but it is cruel on your part to exaggerate the misery of your position, as I am sure you must be doing. Why should your means of living fail because I refuse to marry M. Lenoble? You have lived hitherto without my help, as I have lived of late without yours. Nothing could give me greater happiness than to know that you were exempt from care; and if my toil can procure you a peaceful home in the future—as I believe it can, or education and will to work must go for nothing—there shall be no lack of industry on my part. I will work for you, I will indeed, papa—willingly, happily."