At this Frances coloured high. “It was not Markham. Markham has found out for me. It was some—fellows who had no mercy, he said.”
“Oh yes; they are all the same set. I am very sorry that an innocent girl like you should be in any way mixed up with such people. Whether Lord Markham plucks the pigeon himself, or gets some of his friends to do it——”
“Aunt Caroline, now you take away my last hope; for Markham is my brother; and I will never, never ask any one to help me who speaks so of my brother—he is always so kind, so kind to me.”
“I don’t see what opportunity he has ever had to be kind to you,” said Mrs Clarendon.
But Frances in her disappointment would not listen. She turned away her head, to get rid, so far as was possible, of the blinding tears—those tears which would come in spite of her, notwithstanding all the efforts she could make. “I had a little hope in you,” Frances said; “but now I have none, none. My mother sees him every day; if he lives, she will have saved his life. But I cannot ask her for what I want. I cannot ask her for more—she has done so much. And now, you make it impossible for me to ask you!”
If Frances had studied how to move her aunt best, she could not have hit upon a more effectual way. “My dear child,” cried Mrs Clarendon, hurrying to her, drawing her into her arms, “what is it, what is it that moves you so much? Of whom are you speaking? His life? Whose life is in danger? And what is it you want? If you think I, your father’s only sister, will do less for you than Lady Markham does——! Tell me, my dear, tell me what is it you want?”
Then Frances continued her story. How young Gaunt was ill of a brain-fever, and raved about his losses, and the black and red, and of his mother in mourning (with an additional ache in her heart, Frances suppressed all mention of Constance), and how she understood, though nobody else did, that the Gaunts were not rich, that even the illness itself would tax all their resources, and that the money, the debts to pay, would ruin them, and break their hearts. “I don’t say he has not been wrong, aunt Caroline—oh, I suppose he has been very wrong!—but there he is lying: and oh, how pitiful it is to hear him! and the old General, who was so proud of him; and Mrs Gaunt, dear Mrs Gaunt, who always was so good to me!”
“Frances, my child, I am not a hard-hearted woman, though you seem to think so,—I can understand all that. I am very, very sorry for the poor mother; and for the young man even, who has been led astray: but I don’t see what you can do.”
“What!” cried Frances, her eyes flashing through her tears—“for their son, who is the same as a brother—for them, whom I have always known, who have helped to bring me up? Oh, you don’t know how people live where there are only a few of them,—where there is no society, if you say that. If he had been ill there, at home, we should all have nursed him, every one. We should have thought of nothing else. We would have cooked for him, or gone errands, or done anything. Perhaps those ladies are better who go to the hospitals. But to tell me that you don’t know what I could do! Oh,” cried the girl, springing to her feet, throwing up her hands, “if I had the money, if I had only the money, I know what I would do!”
Mrs Clarendon was a woman who did not spend money, who had everything she wanted, who thought little of what wealth could procure; but she was a Quixote in her heart, as so many women are where great things are in question, though not in small. “Money?” she said, with a faint quiver of alarm in her voice. “My dear, if it was anything that was feasible, anything that was right, and you wanted it very much—the money might be found,” she said. The position, however, was too strange to be mastered in a moment, and difficulties rose as she spoke. “A young man. People might suppose—— And then Sir Thomas—what would Sir Thomas think?”