‘I suppose we have all had a great deal to go through since,’ said Ben. ‘Seven years! it is a large slice out of one’s life; one’s ideas about most things change immensely in seven years.’
‘Do they?’ said Millicent, looking at him with soft, appealing eyes.
‘Very much,’ said Ben, with a smile; ‘so much that one looks back with amazement upon the follies one has been guilty of. A man says to himself, “Is it possible I could have been such an ass?” Are ladies not subject to the same effect of time?’
‘No;—ladies are more constant,’ said Millicent. ‘When our thoughts have turned one way, it does not matter what happens, they always keep the same. We may be obliged to change in outward appearance. We are not so free as you gentlemen are. One’s friends or one’s circumstances sway one sometimes, but in the heart we never change,—not half, oh! not a quarter so much as you.’
‘That may be. I have no experience,’ said Ben.
‘But I have,’ said Millicent, ‘and I do so want to tell you. You know I never was very happy in my circumstances, Mr. Renton. Mamma is very kind, but she does not understand one’s feelings; and when she got me abroad, she had me all in her own hands. Yes, you are quite right about the change time makes. When I look back I cannot think how I could have done it. But I was so young, and so used to obey mamma.’
‘And a very laudable principle, I am sure,’ said Ben, with a polite little bow. ‘I beg your pardon—I thought I saw my brother and Mr. Ponsonby coming up the avenue. You were saying,—something about obedience,—I think?’
‘You do not think it worth while to listen to me,’ said Millicent.
‘Oh, yes, surely,—pray go on. I am full of interest,’ said Ben.
And then the poor creature looked at him with eyes which were pitiful in the eagerness of their appeal. She was a mercenary, wretched woman, ready to barter her beauty for comfort and wealth, and a fine house and a good position; and yet there was still in Mrs. Henry Rich the same redeeming possibility that there had been in Millicent Tracy. If he would have taken her out of that slough of despond, she would have been good, have made him a true wife, have grown a gentle lady, so far as it was in her. To the bottom of her soul Millicent felt this,—just as many a poor criminal feels that in other circumstances he would have been a model of all virtue. And for her the matter was not one without hope;—marriage to a woman may always be a new life,—and the seven years had not dimmed her eyes, nor taken the roses from her cheeks. And by those roses and bright eyes and lovely looks are not a woman’s fate determined continually? Again, it was her last hope. For though admiration was always sweet, yet to be troubled with a boy like this young Guardsman, was irksome to Millicent in her maturity. And to go through a round of such boys,—flattering, wooing them, being wooed,—good heavens! was this all that fortune had in store for a woman? Therefore she made one more effort before she yielded to fate.