“No,” said Durant, hesitating; “I am not able to say that he is. I hope Lady Curtis will not ask me that question.”
“Oh!” said Lucy, the tears springing to her eyes, “do you think I am not as anxious about my only brother—as concerned as mamma?”
“Indeed I do not mean anything of the kind; but I can speak to you more freely. You understand; you always did understand, Miss Curtis,” he said, looking at her with a tender admiration which stole the hardness from Lucy’s heart in spite of herself. “I do not know how it was. It is so natural that Lady Curtis—that all his family should see the folly and the unkindness of it most. But you always saw the whole—and understood.”
“I never excused Arthur, Mr. Durant. No one could know the evil of what he has done—the pain it has produced so well as I.”
“I know,” he said softly, “all the more honour to your delicate heart that understood. I beg your pardon—I was only speaking by way of explanation. I can speak to you as I cannot speak—to any one else. Arthur is not looking well, poor fellow—he is harassed and worried to death. All the glamour has gone out of his eyes, and he sees his wife’s family now as other people see them, as very common-place, sordid, uneducated people, with whom, or with their like, he has no affinity. I would not say even that he did not see this more deeply than—I do, for instance, who am quite indifferent. To me they seem good sort of people enough—in their way. But Arthur has the horror of feeling that they belong to him more or less—and that he is called upon to associate with them.”
“Poor boy! oh, poor boy! and he was always so fastidious! But that is nothing, Mr. Durant—they do not belong to him. He can shake them off whenever he likes; but her—what of her? She is the chief person to be thought of,” said Lucy, with a sigh that it should be so.
“This is precisely the thing which I can say to you, and to no other,” said Durant. “She is not the same as they are. If you could fancy one of the stories of a stolen child—that was always different, always superior to the children of the people who brought it up—”
“Superior—Aunt Anthony’s story does not sound much like superiority! I think you are influenced, as they say gentlemen always are, by her good looks, and that is why you make an exception in favour of—my sister-in-law,” said Lucy, with a sound in those words such as Durant had never heard before from her lips. He looked at her in the growing twilight with wonder and pain. Was his certainty of her superiority to every other person concerned, about to turn out vain? It was almost dark, and he could not make out the expression of Lucy’s face; and of all things in the world the last that could have occurred to the young man was any thing to account for this, which should have been flattering to himself.
When he spoke again, there was some distress in his voice, and a half tone of complaint, “I thought I might venture on saying this to you—I thought you would understand; the facts are all against her. I believe she has managed very badly; and allowed everybody to see her want of cultivation—her strange—ignorance. Nevertheless,” he said earnestly, “I do not despair of Nancy. As for her good looks, they count for very little with me. What effect they may have on idle and unoccupied minds, I cannot pretend to say; but for a man like myself with a busy life and a pre-occupied imagination—”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Durant,” cried Lucy, “I did not wish to pry into your secrets.”