"A very leading question, and a very absurd one. I don't think it is in either your brother or me to be very deeply in love. He would find it feverish and fatiguing—you know how he objects to fatigue; and I—well, if love be anything like what one reads of in books, an all-absorbing, all consuming passion that won't let people eat or sleep, I have never felt it, and I don't want to. I think that sort of love went out of fashion with Amanda Fitzallen. You're a sentimental goose, Miss Stuart, and have taken Byron and Miss Landon in too large doses."
"But you like him," persisted his sister, "don't you, Dithy?"
"Like him—like him!" Her whole face lit up for a second with a light that made it lovely. "Well, yes, Trix, I don't mind owning that much—I do like Charley—like him so well that I won't marry and ruin him. For it means just that, Trixy—ruin. The day we become anything more than friends and cousins your father would disinherit him, and your father isn't the heavy father of the comedy, to rage through four acts, and come round in the fifth, with his fortune and blessing. Charley and I have common-sense, and we have shaken hands and agreed to be good friends and cousins, nothing more."
"What an admirable thing is common-sense! Does Sir Victor know about the hand-shaking and the cousinly agreement?"
"Don't be sarcastic, Beatrix; it isn't your forte! I have nothing to confess to Sir Victor when I am married to him; neither your brother nor any other man will hold the place in my heart (such as it is) that he will. Be very sure of that."
"Ah! such as it is," puts in Trix cynically; "and when, is it to be,
Dithy—the wedding?"
"My dear Trix, I only said yes this morning. Gentlemen don't propose and fix the wedding-day all in a breath. It will be ages from now, no doubt. Of course Lady Helena will object."
"You don't mind that?"
"Not a whit. A grand-aunt is—a grand-aunt, nothing more. She is his only living relative, he is of age, able to speak and act for himself. The true love of any good man honors the woman who receives it. In that way Sir Victor Catheron honors me, and in no other. I have neither wealth nor lineage; in all other things, as God made us, I am his equal!"
She moved to the door, her dark eyes shining, her head erect, looking in her beauty and her pride a mate for a king.