Sick of arguing about the possibility of her indifference, Laura at length confined herself to simple assertions of the fact. Lady Pelham at first merely refused her belief; and, with provoking pity, rallied her niece upon her self-deceit; but, finding that she corroborated her words by a corresponding behaviour to Hargrave, her Ladyship's temper betrayed its accustomed infirmity. She peevishly reproached Laura with taking a coquettish delight in giving pain; insisted that her conduct was a tissue of cruelty and affectation; and upbraided her with disingenuousness in pretending an indifference which she could not feel. 'And does your Ladyship communicate this opinion to Colonel Hargrave?' said Laura, one day, fretted almost beyond her patience by a remonstrance of two hours continuance. 'To be sure I do,' returned Lady Pelham. 'In common humanity I will not allow him to suffer more from your perverseness than I can avoid.' 'Well, Madam,' said Laura, with a sigh and a shrug of impatient resignation, 'nothing remains but that I shew a consistency, which, at least is not common to affectation.'
Lady Pelham's representations had their effect upon Hargrave. They brought balm to his wounded pride, and he easily suffered them to counteract the effect of Laura's calm and uniform assurances of her indifference. While he listened to these, her apparent candour and simplicity, the regret she expressed at the necessity of giving pain, brought temporary conviction to his mind; and, with transports of alternate rage and grief, he now execrated her inconstancy, then his own unworthiness; now abjured her, then the vices which had deprived him of her affection. But the joint efforts of Lady Pelham and Lambert always revived hopes sufficient to make him continue a pursuit which he had not indeed the fortitude to relinquish.
His love (if we must give that name to a selfish desire, mingled at times with every ungentle feeling), had never been so ardent. The well-known principle of our nature which adds charms to what is unattainable, lent new attractions to Laura's really improved loveliness. The smile which was reserved for others seemed but the more enchanting; the hand which he was forbidden to touch seemed but the more soft and snowy; the form which was kept sacred from his approach, bewitched him with more resistless graces. Hargrave had been little accustomed to suppress any of his feelings, and he gave vent to this with an entire neglect of the visible uneasiness which it occasioned to its subject. He employed the private interviews, which Lady Pelham contrived to extort for him, in the utmost vehemence of complaint, protestation, and entreaty. He laboured to awaken the pity of Laura; he even condescended to appeal to her ambition; and persevered, in spite of unequivocal denials, till Laura, disgusted, positively refused ever again to admit him without witnesses.
His public attentions were, if possible, still more distressing to her. Encouraged by Lady Pelham, he, notwithstanding the almost repulsive coldness of Laura's manner, became her constant attendant. He pursued her wherever she went; placed himself, in defiance of propriety, so as to monopolize her conversation; and seemed to have laid aside all his distinguishing politeness, while he neglected every other woman to devote his assiduities to her alone. He claimed the station by her side till Laura had the mortification to observe that others resigned it at his approach; he snatched every opportunity of whispering his adulations in her ear; and, far from affecting any concealment in his preference, seemed to claim the character of her acknowledged adorer. It is impossible to express the vexation with which Laura endured this indelicate pre-eminence. Had Hargrave been the most irreproachable of mankind, she would have shrunk from such obtrusive marks of his partiality; but her sense of propriety was no less wounded by the attendance of such a companion, than her modesty was shocked by her being thus dragged into the notice, and committed to the mercy of the public. The exclusive attentions of the handsome Colonel Hargrave, the mirror of gallantry, the future Lord Lincourt, were not, however undesired, to be possessed unenvied. Those who unsuccessfully angled for his notice, avenged themselves on her to whom they imputed their failure, by looks of scorn, and by sarcastic remarks, which they sometimes contrived should reach the ear of the innocent object of their malice. Laura, unspeakably averse to being the subject of even laudatory observation, could sometimes scarcely restrain the tears of shame and mortification that were wrung from her by attacks which she could neither resent nor escape. In spite of the natural sweetness of her temper, she was sometimes tempted to retort upon Colonel Hargrave the vexation which he caused to her: and his officiousness almost compelled her to forsake the civility within the bounds of which she had determined to confine her coldness.
He complained bitterly of this treatment, and reproached her with taking ungenerous advantage of his passion. 'Why then,' said she, 'will you force me into the insolence of power. If you will suffer me to consider you as a common acquaintance, I shall never claim a right to avenge on you the wrongs of society; but approach no nearer.—I am unwilling to express a sentiment less respectful than dislike.' The proud spirit of Hargrave, however, could ill brook the repulses which he constantly provoked; and often in transports of rage he would break from Laura, swearing that he would no more submit to be thus made the sport of an insensible tyrannical woman.
At first she submitted with patience to his injurious language, in the hope that he would keep his oaths; but she soon found that he only repaid her endurance of his anger by making her submit to what was yet more painful, a renewal of his abject supplications. All her caution could not prevent the private interviews which she granted so unwillingly. He haunted her walks, stole upon her unannounced, detained her almost by force at these accidental meetings, or at those which he obtained by the favour of Lady Pelham. His whole conduct conspired to make him an object of real dread to Laura, though her watchful self-command and habitual benevolence preserved him from her aversion.
Sometimes she could not help wondering at the obstinacy of her persecutor. 'Surely,' said she to him, 'after all I have said, after the manner in which I have said it, you cannot expect any fruit from all these rhapsodies; you must surely think your honour bound to keep them up, at whatever hazard to the credit of your understanding.' Laura had never herself submitted to be driven into a course of actions contrary to reason, and it never occurred to her that her lover had no reason for his conduct, except that he was not sufficiently master of himself to desist from his pursuit.
From the importunities of Hargrave, however, Laura could sometimes escape. Though they were frequent, they were of necessity intermitting. He could not always be at Walbourne; he could not intrude into her apartment. She visited sometimes where he was not admitted, or she could decline the invitation which she knew extended to him. But her persecutions by Lady Pelham had no intermission; from them she had no retreat. Her chamber was no sanctuary from so familiar a friend; and the presence of strangers only served to exercise her Ladyship in that ingenious species of conversation which addresses to the sense of one of the company what it conveys to the ear of the rest.
For some time she employed all her forces in combating Laura's supposed affectation; and when, not without extreme difficulty, she was convinced that she strove against a phantom of her own creation, she next employed her efforts to alter her niece's determination. She tried to rouse her ambition; and again and again expatiated on all the real and on all the imaginary advantages of wealth and title. The theme in her Ladyship's hands seemed inexhaustible, though Laura repeatedly declared that no earthly thing could be less in her esteem than distinctions which she must share with such a person as Hargrave. Every day and all day, the subject was canvassed, and the oft-confuted argument vamped up anew, till Laura was thoroughly weary of the very names of rank, and influence, and coronets, and coaches.
Next, her Ladyship was eloquent upon Laura's implacability. 'Those who were so very unforgiving,' she supposed, 'were conscious that they had no need to be forgiven. Such people might pretend to be Christians, but in her opinion such pretensions were mere hypocrisy.' Laura stood amazed at the strength of self-deception which could produce this sentiment from lips which had pronounced inextinguishable resentment against an only child. Recovering herself, she calmly made the obvious reply, 'that she entertained no enmity against Hargrave; that on the contrary she sincerely wished him every blessing, and the best of all blessings, a renewed mind; but that the Christian precept was never meant to make the vicious and the impure the denizens of our bosoms.' It might be thought that such a reply was quite sufficient, but Lady Pelham possessed one grand qualification for a disputant; she defied conviction. She could shift, and turn, and bewilder, till she found herself precisely at the point from whence she set out.