“With colours and materials three years old,” put in Claudia.
“I tell you it is poverty you laugh at—poverty alone that is ridiculous. We have arrived at a state of things in which there is nothing respected or respectable except money. We pretend to honour rank and ancient lineage, but in our secret hearts we set no value on either unless sustained by wealth.”
“What a tirade!” cried Lady Hartley, “and all because of a little good-natured laughter at those girls’ frocks. To think that a pretty face, which you have seen only twice, should exercise such dominion over you!”
The ladies left the dining-room in a cluster to put on their hats for a walk to the ice. Skating was the rage at Redwold Towers, and even Mrs. Vansittart went to look on. She liked to see her son and daughter disporting themselves, each an adept in the art; and then there was the off-chance of meeting the German nurse with the year-old baby somewhere in the grounds before sunset. The baby had already taken a strong grip upon the grandmother’s heart.
John Vansittart did not go with the skaters, as it had been his wont to go. Nor did he offer to keep his mother company in her afternoon walk. He was in a sullen and resentful mood, resentful of he knew not what; so he started on a solitary ramble in the Redwold copses, where he would have only robins and jays and chaffinches, and the infinite variety of living things whose names he knew not, for his companions.
He was angry with all those talking women, his sister first and foremost; but most of all was he angry with himself.
Yes, it was her beauty that had caught him, that picture of Titania delicately fair against the darkly purple night, her pale gold hair, her sapphire eyes shining in the starlight. Yes, his sister’s flippant tongue had hit upon the humiliating truth. It was only because this girl appealed to his fancy that he was so eager and so angry, this girl whom he had seen the other night for the first time, of whose heart, character, antecedents, kindred, he knew absolutely nothing. It was only because she was so lovely in his eyes that he was prepared to champion her, ready to marry her if she would have him.
“I am a fool,” he told himself, “an arrant fool, a fool so foolish that even shallow-brained Maud can see my folly. I know nothing of this girl, absolutely nothing except that surface frankness which passes for innocence—and which might be assumed by Becky Sharp herself. Indeed, we are told that it was Becky’s guilelessness which always impressed people in her favour. May not this girl, daughter of a shady father, be every bit as clever and far-seeing as Becky Sharp? I dare say she is laughing at my infatuation already, and wondering how far it will lead me. Sefton, too! Miss Green said there was an understanding between them. His manner was certainly a thought too easy. No doubt she is trying to hook Sefton, a landowner, one of the best matches in the neighbourhood. And she puts on that stand-offish manner of malice aforethought, to lead him on by keeping him off. I should be an idiot if I were to commit myself, without knowing a great deal more about the young lady. I have been getting absolutely maudlin about the girl. This is how half the unhappy marriages are made.”
He stopped in his swinging walk, after tramping along the narrow muddy track at five miles an hour. The ring of the skates, the shouts of boys playing hockey, sounded clear upon the frosty air. He was not more than a mile from the pond as the crow flies.
“Sophy said their gowns would be finished this morning,” he mused. “I wonder whether they will be on the ice this afternoon.”