“I won’t talk about it, or I shall get angry. Cant—in a man’s will—to disguise something worse, and nastier—pouf! Look here, my dear, try France—try Paris. My sister Margaret de Guiche would like you to pay her a visit. She said so. She’s alone, and you need see nobody. De Guiche is in Petersburg. You couldn’t have a better dueña than Margaret. It will be a kindness to her—and a kindness to me. I wish you’d think of it.”
She listened with hanging head, and veiled eyes. Her eyelids, always heavy, seemed now as if they were of intolerable weight. She watched her twisting fingers as she thanked him for the proposal. She would think of it, she told him—she had everything to think of.
“I know that very well,” Kesteven said; “but there are some things which I hope you need not consider. One of them is the great regard I have for you.”
Oh, yes, she was sure of that. He had shown her so much kindness.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he continued; “and I’ll go as far as this. If you decide to renounce your legacy—on reflection—I should claim the privilege of helping you to do it. I can hardly go further—but so far I am ready to go. Remember that. Remember that I am allowed to call myself your friend. Remember, if you choose, that I am five-and-sixty, and take heart—if you need heart.”
It was clear what was implied in this speech; but she did not feel equal to quieting the anxiety which underlay it. She made no remark.
“At any rate,” said his lordship, “I tell you that you may command the Hôtel de Guiche. Margaret may be trusted—and perhaps I need not add that you may trust me, too.” But he couldn’t get her to say more than she would think of it, so took his leave. He kissed her hand.
So far she had not seen Duplessis, nor heard from him; but the sense that an interview with him was impending, was, as it were, swinging like a sword over her head, fretted her nerves so badly that she was incapable of thinking what she could say to him when he came to her—as of course he would—with an offer of instant marriage. That would be, in his view, the only possible answer to the public affront he had received. But as the days went on and he made no sign she began to wonder dimly whether, after all, she might not escape—and from such faint sighings thrown out into the vague she came by degrees to hopes—and from hopes to plans and shifts.
Everything in town conspired together to make her position impossible. The chill reserve of Mrs. James—whose frozen civility was worse than any rebuke; the letters of her parents from Blackheath, kind, repining, half-informed letters which said in effect, We don’t know what is being cried against you, but be sure that we are on your side; and the terrible letters of Jinny (almost Mrs. Podmore by now, and vigorously on the side of decorum)—“the disgrace which has been cast upon our family . . . your unfortunate liaison, . . . One can only hope that you will let them be a warning, child. . . . Let us be thankful that things are no worse . . .”—all this made the poor girl so self-conscious that she could hardly lift her head. She thought that the very servants were judging her—as, no doubt, they were; she felt beaten to the earth; and the fund of common-sense, the fund of charity, which she had at her call—through mere panic—suspended payment.
If she had been left to herself she would have borne her husband no grudge for seeking to tie her publicly to his name. She would have pitied, not blamed him, for supposing that three thousand or thirty thousand a year could have held her. And certainly that midnight confession absolved her in her own conscience. If she had looked back upon her dealings with Duplessis it would have been to see what a little fool she had been—to blush at her ignorance, not at her shame. But now her world insisted on her disgrace; she was made to stand in a sheet like a Jane Shore; the straight, clinging, disgraceful robe imprisoned her body and soul. She felt that she must die if she stayed where she was, a public mock; but until Duplessis delayed so obviously his coming she had felt bound in honour to see him.