"Excuse me, Sir Victor," Edith answers, with an impatient motion, "I feel too tired—too lazy, which ever you like—to stir. Some other day I will go with pleasure—just now I feel like lying here and doing the dolce far niente. Don't let me detain you, however."
He turns to leave her with a disappointed face. Edith closes her eyes and takes an easier position among the pillows. The door closes behind him; Trix flings down her book and bursts forth:
"Of all the heartless, cold-blooded animals it has ever been my good fortune to meet, commend me to Edith Darrell!"
The dark eyes unclose and look up at her.
"My dear Trix! what's the matter with you now? What new enormity have
I committed?"
"Oh, nothing new—nothing new at all," is Trixy's scornful response; "it is quite in keeping with the rest of your conduct. To be purely and entirely selfish is the normal state of the future Lady Catheron! Poor Sir Victor! who has won you. Poor Charley! who has lost you. I hardly know which I pity most."
"I don't see that you need waste your precious pity on either," answered Edith, perfectly unmoved by Miss Stuart's vituperation; "keep it for me. I shall make Sir Victor a very good wife as wives go, and for Charley—well, Lady Gwendoline is left to console him."
"Yes, of course, there is Lady Gwendoline. O Edith! Edith! what are you made of? Flesh and blood like other people, or waxwork, with a stone for a heart? How can you sell yourself, as you are going to do? Sir Victor Catheron is no more to you than his hall-porter, and yet you persist in marrying him. You love my brother and yet you hand him over to Lady Gwendoline. Come, Edith, be honest for once; you love Charley, don't you?"
"It is rather late in the day for such tender confessions as that," Edith replies, with a reckless sort of laugh; "but yes—if the declaration does you any good, Trix—I love Charley."
"And you give him up! Miss Darrell, I give you up as a conundrum I can't solve. Rank and title are all very well—nobody thinks more of them than I do; but if I loved a man," cried Trix, with kindling eyes and glowing cheeks, "I'd marry him! Yes; I would, though he were a beggar."