He did not reply directly. "There never was anybody with such a keen eye for duty," he said; "when she found out I hadn't written to my mother, don't you know, that was when she pulled me up. 'Don't speak to me,' she said. She would not hear a word. I was just obliged to pack up. But it was perfectly unsuitable. I never could help acknowledging that."
"Wilfrid," said Edith, half in real, half in fictitious enthusiasm,—for it served her purpose so admirably that it was difficult not to assume a little more than she felt—"how can you stand there and tell me that there was anything unsuitable in a girl who could behave so finely as that. Is it because she had no stupid little title in her family, for example? You have titles enough for half-a-dozen, I hope. Are you not ashamed to speak to one girl of another like that——"
"Thank you," said Millefleurs, softly,—"thank you; you are a darling. All you say is quite true. But she is not—exactly a girl. The fact is—she is older than—my people would have liked. Of course that was a matter of complete indifference to me."
"O—oh! of course," said Edith, faintly: this is a point on which girls are not sympathetic. She was very much taken aback by the intimation. But she recovered her courage, and said with a great deal of interest, "Tell me all about her now."
"Are you quite decided?" he said solemnly. "Edith,—let us pause a little; don't condemn me, don't you know, to disappointment and heartbreak, and all that, without sufficient cause. I feel sure we should be happy together. I for one would be the happiest man——"
"I could not, I could not," she cried, with a sudden little effusion of feeling, quite unintentional. A flush of hot colour ran over her, her eyes filled with tears. She looked at him involuntarily, almost unconscious, with a certain appeal, which she herself only half understood, in her eyes. But Millefleurs understood, not at the half word, as the French say, but at the half thought which he discovered in the delicate transparent soul looking at him through those two involuntary tears. He gazed at her for a moment with a sudden startled enlargement of his own keen little eyes. "To be sure!" he cried. "How was it I never thought of that before?"
Edith felt as if she had made some great confession, some cruel admission, she did not know what. She turned away from him trembling. This half comic interview suddenly turned in a moment to one of intense and overwhelming, almost guilty emotion. What had she owned to? What was it he made so sure of? She could not tell. But now it was that Millefleurs showed the perfect little gentleman he was. The discovery was not entirely agreeable to his amour propre, and wounded his pride a little; but in the meantime the necessary thing was to set Edith at her ease so far as was possible, and make her forget that she had in any way committed herself. What he did was to set a chair for her, with her back to the lamp, so that her countenance need not be revealed for the moment, and to sit down by her side with confidential calmness. "Since you wish it," he said, "and are so kind as to take an interest in her, there is nothing I should like so much as to tell you about my dear Miss Nelly Field. I should like you to be friends."
Would it were possible to describe the silent hush of the house while these two talked in this preposterous manner in the solitude so carefully prepared for them! Lord Lindores sat breathless in his library, listening for every sound, fixing his eyes upon his door, feeling it inconceivable that such a simple matter should take so long a time to accomplish. Lady Lindores in her chamber, still more anxious, foreseeing endless struggles with her husband if Millefleurs persevered, and almost worse, his tragical wrath and displeasure if Millefleurs (as was almost certain) accepted at once Edith's refusal, sat by her fire in the dark, and cried a little, and prayed, almost without knowing what it was that she asked of God. Not, surely, that Edith should sacrifice herself? Oh no; but that all might go well—that there might be peace and content. She did not dictate how that was to be. After a while both father and mother began to raise their heads, to say to themselves that unless he had been well received, Millefleurs would not have remained so long oblivious of the passage of time. This brought a smile upon Lord Lindores's face. It dried his wife's eyes, and made her cease praying. Was it possible? Could Edith, after all, have yielded to the seductions of the dukedom? Her mother felt herself struck to the heart by the thought, as if an arrow had gone into her. Was not she pleased? It would delight her husband, it would secure family peace, it would give Edith such a position, such prospects, as far exceeded the utmost hopes that could have been formed for her. Somehow, however, the first sensation of which Lady Lindores was conscious was a humiliation deep and bitter. Edith too! she said to herself, with a quivering smile upon her lips, a sense of heart-sickness and downfall within her. She had wished it surely—she had felt that to see her child a duchess would be a fine thing, a thing worth making a certain sacrifice for; and Millefleurs had nothing in him to make a woman fear for her daughter's happiness. But women, everybody knows, are inaccessible to reason. It is to be doubted whether Lady Lindores had ever in her life received a blow more keen than when she made up her mind that Edith was going to do the right thing, the prudent wise thing, which would secure family peace to her mother, and the most dazzling future to herself.
When a still longer interval had elapsed, and no one came to tell her of the great decision, which evidently must have been made, Lady Lindores thought it best to go back to the drawing-room, in which she had left Edith and her lover. To think that Edith should have found the love-talk of Millefleurs so delightful after all, as to have forgotten how time passed, and everything but him and his conversation, made her mother smile once more, but not very happily. When she entered the drawing-room she saw the pair at the other end of it, by the fire, seated close together, he bending forward talking eagerly, she leaning towards him, her face full of smiles and interest. They did not draw back, or change their position, as lovers do, till Lady Lindores, much marvelling, came close up to them, when Millefleurs, still talking, jumped up to find a chair for her. "And that was the last time we met," Millefleurs was saying, too much absorbed in his narrative to give it up. "An idea of duty like that, don't you know, leaves nothing to be said."
Lady Lindores sat down, and Millefleurs stood in front of the two ladies, with his back to the fire, as Englishmen love to stand. There was a pause—of extreme bewilderment on the part of the new-comer. Then Millefleurs said, in his round little mellifluous voice, folding his hands,—"I have been telling dear Edith of a very great crisis in my life. She understands me perfectly, dear Lady Lindores. I am very sorry to tell you that she will not marry me; but we are friends for life."