“Speak! say! much she would care,” cried Frederick. “It just shows how little you know Amanda. That confounded heart disease of hers—if she has a heart disease—makes her believe that she is free to insult everybody. She must not be crossed herself; but there is nothing she likes so much as to cross others. No, I shall have to give in. I shall have to take her there, though I hate the whole concern. I do not think there ever was a more miserable wretch than I am on the face of the earth,” cried Frederick, flinging himself wearily into a chair.
“My poor boy!” said his mother, going to him, and passing her soft kind hand over his forehead, raising the waves of his hair, which were not in their usual good order. Frederick was not generally very tolerant of his mother’s caresses, but of late he had been soothed by them. Amanda cared very little for his amour propre, and made no particular effort to magnify his importance, and a man likes to feel himself important, if only to his mother. On the other hand, his mother was half-pleased even in the midst of her pity for him that he should, as it were, throw aside his wife, and recognize himself as a victim. It is not a fine quality, this, in women; but I am afraid a great many good women are conscious of possessing it. When a man has connected himself with his inferior, with some one we disapprove of, we like him to find out his mistake. We feel that it is better for him to know that he has done badly, very badly, for himself; and though in higher minds a certain contempt for the being who thus gives up the cause of his once-beloved, mingles with the softer feeling, yet we are all more or less mollified towards the son or brother who has made a foolish marriage, when he delivers over his wife, metaphorically, to our tender mercies, and abandons her standard. I don’t know whether the same sentiment exists on the other side, but I avow its existence on my own side. Mrs. Eastwood was pleased that her boy gave his Amanda up. She was far more tenderly sorry for him than had he been still in love. In words, she tried “to make the best of her,” and recognized fully that now the deed was done it was to be desired that Frederick should be “happy” with the woman who was his wife; but she thought more highly of him because he was not happy. She was more pleased, more tender, much more softened towards her son than if his household had been a pleasant one. Nelly did not share these sentiments. She was impatient with Frederick, and disposed to despise him for giving up Amanda’s cause. She put herself in Amanda’s place, small as was her sympathy for that young woman, and involuntarily conjured up before her a picture of the Molyneuxes, who would feel towards Ernest’s wife much as the Eastwoods felt to Frederick’s. Would Ernest abandon her, Nelly, to their strictures? would he allow them to suppose that he too had made a mistake? This thought made Nelly’s cheeks burn, and her eyes glow, and disposed her on the spot to assault Frederick, and lift up Amanda’s falling standard.
“It is curious,” said Mrs. Eastwood, after a pause, “that we should be so much entangled with Sterborne, where all the Eastwoods live, without having anything to do with the Eastwoods. Perhaps Innocent might travel with you, Frederick, if you are obliged to go. She has been invited to the High Lodge, to make acquaintance with her father’s family.”
“Who lives at the High Lodge?”
“Mr. Vane’s sister, the only one of the Vanes who has taken much notice of Innocent.”
“What does John Vane want with Innocent?” said Frederick, his tone changing. He got up from his chair, and slightly pushed away his mother, who was still leaning over him. “Does he want to marry her too?”
“Does Mr. Vane want to marry some one else—too?” said Nelly instinctively, with an impulse for which next moment she was sorry.
“You should know best,” said Frederick; and then he turned to his mother with that air of superior knowledge and virtue which he knew so well how to assume. “I told you when that man first came to the house that his character was very doubtful. He has always been a queer fellow. Had I thought that you would receive him almost into the family, and make so much of him, I should never have allowed him to come here at all.”
“But, Frederick!—I have never seen anything in him that was not nice,” said Mrs. Eastwood, alarmed.
“Oh, I daresay, mother. A man does not come into a lady’s drawing-room to show off his shady qualities; but I warned you to start with. There are many queer stories about him current among men. Ask Molyneux—I don’t think there is any love lost between him and John Vane.”