Upon the evening on which Mr. Maltravers had pleaded for Brighton, Miss Fausset and her protégé were alone together during the half-hour before dinner; the lady resting after a long day in her district: a composed, quiet figure, in fawn-coloured silk gown and point lace kerchief, seated erect in the high-backed chair, with folded hands, and eyes gazing thoughtfully at the fire; the gentleman lounging in a low chair on the other side of the hearth in luxurious self-abandonment, his red-brown eyes shining in the fire-glow, and his red-brown hair throwing off glints of light.
They had been talking, and had lapsed into silence; and it was after a long pause that Miss Fausset said,
“I wonder you have not made the young lady an offer before now.”
“Suppose I am not in love with the young lady?”
“You have been too assiduous for that supposition to occur to me. You have haunted this house ever since Miss Ransome has been here.”
“And yet I am not in love with her.”
“She is a pretty and attractive girl, and disposed to think highly of you.”
“And yet I am not in love with her,” he repeated, with a smile which made Miss Fausset angry. “To think that you should turn matchmaker, you who have said so many bitter things of the fools who fall in love, and the still greater fools who marry; you who stand alone like a granite monolith, like Cleopatra’s Needle, or the Matterhorn, or anything grand and solitary and unapproachable; you to counsel the civilised slavery we call marriage!”
“My dear César, I can afford to stand alone; but you cannot afford to surrender your chance of winning an amiable wife with fifteen hundred a year.”
“That for fifteen hundred a year!” exclaimed Castellani, wafting an imaginary fortune from the tips of his fingers with airy insolence. “Do you think I will sell myself—for so little?”