“Condescend! Nonsense!” cried Clare. “You are just as good as she is;—so long as you are not carried away by a pretty face. It is so humbling to see you men. A pretty face carries the day with you over everything. Can you fancy anything more humiliating to a girl? She may be good, and wise, and clever, and yet people only want to marry her because her cheek has a pretty colour or her eyes are bright. I think it is almost as bad as if it were for money. To be married for your beauty! Every bit as bad—or even worse; for the money will last at least, and the beauty can’t.”
“But, my dear Clare, I don’t want to marry—either for beauty or anything else,” said Edgar.
“But you must marry,” repeated his sister, peremptorily. “If you had set your heart upon it, Edgar, I would not mind Gussy Thornleigh. I should like Ada a great deal better; but of course they have the same belongings. I think she is rather frivolous, and a great chatterbox; but still if you like her best——”
“I don’t like her best,” said Edgar. “I don’t like anybody best, except you. When you marry, then perhaps it will be time to think of it; but in the meantime I am very happy. I think, Clare, you should let well alone.”
“But it is not well,” said Clare, with her usual energy. And then she added, under her breath, “Arthur Arden is your heir-presumptive. He will be the one who will be looked up to; and if you don’t marry soon, people will think—Edgar, you had much better make up your mind.”
This was said very rapidly, and with great earnestness. Was it a last attempt to stand by her brother, and resist the influence of the other, who, whether visibly or not, was her brother’s antagonist? Edgar turned round upon her with tranquil wonder, entirely unmoved. She was excited, but he was calm. Arthur’s pretensions, it was evident, were nothing to him.
“Well?” he said. “Of course Arthur Arden is my heir; and probably he would make a much better Squire than I. The only thing for which I have a grudge at him is that he is like you. I confess I detest him for that. He may have my land when his time comes and I am out of the way; but I don’t like him to be nearer than I am to my sister. He is an Arden, like you.”
“He is like the old Ardens,” said Clare, with a faint smile; and then the conversation dropped. She did not care to prolong it. They went across the cheerful country, still in the glory of the fresh foliage. The blossoms were beginning to fall, the first flush of spring verdure was past, but still the road was pleasant and the morning fine. Whether it was that Clare found enough to occupy her thoughts, or that she did not wish to disclose the confused state of feeling in which she was, it would be difficult to say; but, at all events, she gave up the talk, which it was her wont to lead and direct. And Edgar, left to himself, ran over his recent experiences, and, for almost the first time since he had seen her, thought of Gussy Thornleigh. She was very “nice;” she was a very different person to have at your elbow from that pretty Alice Pimpernell, whom Clare held in such needless terror. If a man could secure such a companion—so amusing, so pretty, so full of brightness, would not he be a lucky man? Edgar let this question skim through his mind, with that sense of pleasant exhilaration which moves a young man who is sensible of the possibility of power in himself, the privilege of making choice, before any real love has come in to change the balance of feeling. He had not been made subject by Gussy, had not set his heart on her, nor transferred to her the potential voice; and it half amused, half disturbed him to think that he probably might, if he chose, have for the asking that prettiest, liveliest, charming little creature. He did not enter so deeply into the question as to realize that it was his position, his wealth, his name, and not himself which she would be sure to marry. He only felt that it was a curious, amusing, exciting thought. He was not used to such reflections; and, indeed, had he gone into it with any seriousness, Edgar, who had a natural and instinctive reverence for women, would have been the first to blush at his own superficial mixture of pleased vanity and amusement. But, being fancy free, and feeling the surface of his mind thus lightly rippled by imagination, he could not think of the young women with whom he had been brought into accidental contact since he came home without a certain pleasant emotion. They moved him to a sort of affectionate sentiment which was not in the least love, though, at the same time, it was not the kind of sentiment with which their brothers would have inspired him. Probably he would have been utterly indifferent about their brothers. With a sensation of pleasure and amusement he suffered his thoughts to stray about the subject: but he had not fallen in love. He was as far from that malady as if he had never seen a woman in his life; and, with a smile on his lip, he asked himself how it was that they did not move him simply as men did—or rather, how it was that they affected him so differently? not with passionate or irreverent, far less evil thoughts, but with a soft sense of affectionateness and indulgent friendship, a mingling of personal gratification and liking which was quite distinct from love on the one hand, and, on the other, from any sentiment ever called forth by man.
Lady Augusta was at home, with all her girls, but on the eve of starting. They were going to town for the short season, which was all Mr. Thornleigh meant to give them that year. “Don’t you think it is hard,” Gussy said, confidentially, to Edgar, “that because Harry has got into debt we should all be stinted? If any of us girls were to get into debt, I wonder what papa would say. This is the last day of May, and we must be back in July—six weeks; fancy only six weeks in town, or perhaps not quite so much as that.”
“But Clare does not go at all,” said Edgar, “and I don’t think she suffers much.”