"Yes," emphatically interrupted Mr. Ravensworth. "Well?"
"Well!" irritably returned the Major: "then there's so much the more credit due to him for settling down. When he found that Cross was really expecting to have Blanche, and that he might lose her altogether, he spoke up, and said he should like her himself."
"Does Blanche approve of the exchange?"
"She was rather inclined to kick at it," returned the Major, in his respectable phraseology, "and we had a few tears.—But if you ask questions in that sarcastic tone, sir, you don't deserve to be answered. Not that Blanche wanted to keep Cross; she acknowledged that she was only too thankful to be rid of him; but, about behaving dishonourably, as she called it. 'My dear,' said I, 'there's your absurd rusticity coming in again. You don't know the world. Such things are done in high life every day.' She believed me, and was reconciled. You look black as a thunder-cloud, Ravensworth. What right have you to do so, pray?"
"None in the world. I beg pardon. I was thinking of Blanche's happiness."
"You had better think of her good," retorted the Major. "She likes Level. I don't say she is yet in love with him: but she did not like Cross. Level is an attractive man, remember."
"Has been rather too much so," cynically retorted Mr. Ravensworth.
"Here she comes. I am going out; so you may offer your congratulations at leisure."
Major Carlen went away, and Blanche entered. She took her seat by the fire, and as Mr. Ravensworth gazed down upon her, a feeling of deep regret and pity came over him. Shame! thought he, to sacrifice her to Level. For in truth that nobleman's name was not in the best odour, and Arnold Ravensworth was a man of strict notions.
It has been asserted that some natures possess an affinity the one for the other; are irresistibly drawn together in the repose of full and perfect confidence. It is a mysterious affinity, not born of love: and it may be experienced by two men or women who have outlived even the remembrance of the passion. Had Blanche Heriot been offered to Arnold Ravensworth, he would have declined her, for he loved another, and she had as much idea of loving the man in the moon as of loving him. Nevertheless, that never-dying, unfathomable part of them, the spirit, was attracted, like finding like. Between such, there can be little reserve.