“My darling!” he replied, kissing her again. Her sentiments were very pretty, very romantic, and so forth, and not objectionable considering she was a woman, but still hardly to the purpose. And, woman though she was, she must learn to take less poetical and high-flown, more conventional and “accepted,” views of things. Yet notwithstanding his pleasing sense of masculine superiority, he had winced a little inwardly while she spoke. For a moment there flashed before him an impulse of perfect honesty and candour, a temptation to tell her what small ground she had had for this innocent faith of hers,—a sort of yearning to be loved by her for what he was, and no more.
“But, no,” he decided, “it would not do. If she once heard about Roma, she would never forget it. It would spoil all. If she did not resent my admiration for Roma, she would resent my having amused myself and her at Wareborough with what I never then dreamt would end seriously with either of us, at the very time I was counting on all coming straight with the other. She would never believe that I really cared for her, as most certainly I do. No, it would never do. Her head, poor dear, is cram-full of belief in first love and only love, and all the rest of the school-girl creed, and I am sure I don’t want to disturb it, or to awake any nonsensical jealousy.”
For that the green-eyed, hydra-headed monster lies somewhere sleeping in every woman’s heart, Captain Chancellor doubted as little as that there are fish in the sea or smouldering fires in Mount Vesuvius. And that no wife has a right to peep behind the closed door of her husband’s previous life, or to resent exclusion therefrom, was another of his not-to-be-disputed axioms. So he only smiled and called her his darling, and put away from him the momentary impulse to risk all by confiding to her the true history of the events and feelings of the last few months.
“But in another sense you distrusted me,” he went on after a little pause, speaking gravely again and with some hesitation, as if fearful of hurting her; “how could you reconcile my—my manner to you this morning with what you were then believing about me?”
“I didn’t reconcile it,” answered Eugenia, naïvely; “I only thought, as I had done before, that honour and inclination were pointing different ways;” here she stopped abruptly and blushed crimson. “It sounds dreadfully conceited to say this,” she added, “but you asked me, and I must tell you everything now, must not I? I was so bitterly sorry for you, and, oh, so miserable myself.”
It was a little hard to say anything but sweet words to this, but Beauchamp persevered.
“But don’t you see, dearest, had it been as you thought, I could not have broken my pledge without the grossest dishonour? Perhaps you hardly understand how these things are looked upon in the world, you are so young and innocent, and perhaps a tiny little bit too romantic,” here he stroked her cheek fondly, “but you will learn that there are some things men of honour cannot do, not even to win such a darling as you.”
The crimson, hardly yet faded from the girl’s face, deepened almost painfully. She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke it seemed to cost her a little effort.
“I am ignorant, very ignorant,” she said gently. “But there are some things it doesn’t require years or experience to know. I trust you will not find me ignorant in these. Don’t think I thought you capable of breaking your word—not even for me,” with a little smile and an attempt at playfulness, “but I thought—” she hesitated; “I have read that even the noblest and best may be terribly drawn two ways sometimes—there may come to the best of us tremendous temptations, may there not? Could the best people ever get to be the best if they had not felt temptation more strongly than others? And then, too, though one hardly likes to say so, there do seem sometimes to come times when ordinary rules—not real right and wrong of course, but our way of interpreting them—seem to fail one; when keeping one’s word in one direction would be breaking it more unpardonably in another. Oh no, no, if I could put in words what I felt for and thought of you this morning, you would see I did you no dishonour.”
There was a pathetic appeal in her tone as she uttered the last few words; she had said more than she intended, carried away by her subject, and the remembrance of the battle of feelings she herself had so recently fought her way through. Captain Chancellor was a little puzzled, a little annoyed, and a little surprised. It was not quite so easy to assert his superiority as he had imagined. Instinctively he sheltered himself by taking it for granted.