“Ah!” said Constance, looking at her with a sort of impartial scrutiny. Then she added, with a sequence of thoughts which it was not difficult to follow, “Don’t you think it is very odd that you and I should be the same age?”
Frances felt herself grow red, and the water came to her eyes. She looked wistfully at the other, who was so much more advanced than she felt herself to be. “I suppose—we ought to have been like each other,” she said.
“We are not, however, a bit. You are like mamma. I don’t know whether you are like her in mind—but on the outside. And I am like him. It is very funny. It shows that one has these peculiarities from one’s birth; it couldn’t be habit or association, as people say, for I have never been with him—neither have you with mamma. I suppose he is very independent-minded, and does what he likes without thinking? So do I. And you consider what other people will say, and how it will look, and a thousand things.”
It did not seem to Frances that this was the case; but she was not at all in the habit of studying herself, and made no protest. Did she consider very much what other people would say? Perhaps it was true. She had been obliged, she reflected, to consider what Mariuccia would say; so that probably Constance was right.
“It was Markham that discovered you, after all, as I told you. He is invaluable; he never forgets; and if you want to find anything out, he will take any amount of trouble. I may as well tell you why I left home. If we are going to live together as sisters, we ought to make confidants of each other; and if you have to go, you can take my part. Well, then! You must know there is a man in it. They say you should always ask, ‘Who is She?’ when there is a row between men; and I am sure it is just as natural to ask, ‘Who is He?’ when a girl gets into a scrape.”
The language, the tone, the meaning, were all new to Frances. She did not know anything about it. When there is a row between men; when a girl gets into a scrape: the one and the other were equally far from her experience. She felt herself blush, though she scarcely knew why. She shook her head when Constance added, though rather as a remark than as a question, “Don’t you know? Oh, well; I did not mean, have you any personal experience, but as a general principle? The man in this case was well enough. Papa said, when I told him, that it was quite right; that I had better have made up my mind without making a fuss; that he would have advised me so, if he had known. But I will never allow that this is a point upon which any one can judge for you. Mamma pressed me more than a mother has any right to do—to a person of my age.”
“But, Constance, eighteen is not so very old.”
“Eighteen is the age of reason,” said the girl, somewhat imperiously; then she paused and added—“in most cases, when one has been much in the world, like me. Besides, it is like the middle ages when your mother thinks she can make you do what she pleases and marry as she likes. That must be one’s own affair. I must say that I thought papa would take my part more strongly, for they have always been so much opposed. But after all, though he is not in harmony with her, still the parents’ side is his side.”
“Did you not like—the gentleman?” said Frances. Nothing could be more modest than this question, and yet it brought the blood to her face. She had never heard the ordinary badinage on this subject, or thought of love with anything but awe and reverence, as a mystery altogether beyond her and out of discussion. She did not look at her sister as she put the question. Constance lay back in the long wicker-work chair, well lined with cushions, which was her father’s favourite seat, with her hands clasped behind her head, in one of those attitudes of complete abandon which Frances had been trained to think impossible to a girl.
“Did I like—the gentleman? I did not think that question could ever again be put to me in an original way. I see now what is the good of a sister. Mamma and Markham and all my people had such a different way of looking at it. You must know that that is not the first question, whether you like the man. As for that, I liked him—well enough. There was nothing to—dislike in him.”