“Tell me,” said Rollo; “you know how much interest I take in everything that concerns you. Surely, Miss Despard, after this long time that we have been seeing each other, you know that? Won’t you tell me? I cannot bear to see you so sad, so unlike yourself.”
“Perhaps that is the best thing that could happen,” said Lottie, “that I should be unlike myself. I wish I could be like someone with more sense; I have been so foolish! Everybody knows that we are poor; I never concealed it, but I never thought—— Oh! how silly we have been, Law and I! I used to scold him, but I never saw that I was just the same myself. We ought to have learned to do something, if it were only a trade. We are both young and strong, but we are good for nothing, not able to do anything. I used to scold him: but I never thought that I was just as bad myself.”
“Don’t say so, don’t say so! You were quite right to scold him; men ought to work. But you” cried Rollo with real agitation, “it is not to be thought of. You! don’t speak of such a thing. What is the world coming to, when you talk of working, while such a fellow as I——”
“Ah! that is quite different,” said Lottie. “You are rich, or, at least, you are the same as if you were rich; but we are really poor, we have no money: and everything we have, it is papa’s. I suppose he has a right to do whatever he likes with it; it seems strange, but I suppose he has a right. And, then, what is to become of us? How could I be so silly as not to think of that before? It is all my own fault; don’t think I am finding fault with papa, Mr. Ridsdale. I suppose he has a right, and I don’t want to grumble; it only—seems natural—to tell you.” Lottie did not know what an admission she was making. She sighed again into that soft distant horizon, then turned to him with a smile trembling about her lips. It was a relief to tell him—she could speak to him as she could not speak to Captain Temple or Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, though she had known them so much longer. “Perhaps I am only out of temper,” she said. She could not but feel more light of heart standing beside him with nobody near; they seemed to belong to each other so.
“How good, how sweet of you to say so,” he cried. “Then treat me as if it were natural; come and sit down—nobody will interrupt us—and tell me everything I want to know.”
They had met together in Lottie’s little drawing-room before, in the eye of day, and three or four times under Lady Caroline’s eye; but never before like this, in the twilight, all alone in the world, as it were, two of them, and no more. Lottie hesitated for a moment; but what could be wrong in it? There was nobody to disturb them, and her heart was so full; and to talk to him was so pleasant. She seemed able to say more to him than to any other. He understood her at half a word, whereas to the others she had to say everything, to say even more than she meant before they saw what she meant. She sat down, accordingly, in the corner of the seat, and told him all that had happened; herself beginning to see some humour in it as she told the story, half laughing one moment, half crying the next. And Rollo went into it with all his heart. All their meetings had produced their natural effect; for the last fortnight he had felt that he ought to go away, but he had not gone away. He could not deprive himself of her, of their intercourse, which was nothing yet implied so much, those broken conversations, and the language of looks, that said so much more than words. Never, perhaps, had his intercourse with any girl been so simple, yet so unrestrained. If the old Captain sometimes looked at him with suspicion, he was the only one who did so; and Lottie had neither suspicion nor doubt of him, nor had any question as to his “intentions” arisen in her mind. She told him her grief now, not dully, with the heavy depression that cannot be moved, but with gleams of courage, of resolution, even of fun, unable to resist the temptation of Polly’s absurdity, seeing it now as she had not been able to see it before. “I never knew before,” she said fervently, “what a comfort it was to talk things over—but, then, whom could I talk them over with? Law, who thinks it best not to think, never to mind—but sometimes one is obliged to mind: or Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, whom I cannot say everything to—— or;—Mr. Ridsdale!” said Lottie, in alarm—“pray, pray forgive me if I have bored you. I have been pouring out everything to you. I never thought—I did not intend——”
“Don’t tell me that,” he said. “I hoped you did intend to confide in me, to trust to my sympathy. Who can be so much interested? to whom can it be so important——?” He leaned forward closer to her, and Lottie instinctively drew away from him a hairs-breadth; but she thought that quite natural too, as natural as that she should be able to speak to him better than to anyone else. They had both made the whole avowal of their hearts in saying these words; but it had not been done in words which frightened either or changed their position towards each other. Meanwhile she was content enough, quieted by the sense of leaning her trouble upon him, while he was gradually growing into agitation. Lottie had got all her emergency required—his sympathy, his support, the understanding that was so dear to her. After all her trouble she had a moment of ease; her heart was no longer sore, but soothed with the balm of his tender pity and indignation.
But that which calmed Lottie threw Rollo into ever-increasing agitation. A man who has said so much as that to a girl, especially to one who is in difficulty and trouble, is bound even to himself to say more. The crisis began for him where for her it momentarily ended. To love her and as good as tell her so, to receive, thus ingenuously given, that confession of instinctive reliance upon him which was as good as a betrayal of her love; and to let her go and say nothing more—could a man do that and yet be a man? Rollo was not a man who had done right all the days of his life. He had been in very strange company, and had gone through many an adventure; but he was a man whom vice had never done more than touch. Even among people of bad morals he had not known how to abandon the instincts of honour; and in such an emergency what was he to do? Words came thronging to his lips, but his mind was distracted with his own helplessness. What had he to offer? how could he marry? he asked himself with a kind of despair. Yet something must be thought of, something suggested. “Lottie,” he said after that strange pause—“Lottie—I cannot call you Miss Despard any more, as if I were a stranger. Lottie, you know very well that I love you. I am as poor as you are, but I cannot bear this. You must trust to me for everything—you must—Lottie, you are not afraid to trust yourself to me—you don’t doubt me?” he cried. His mind was driven wildly from one side to another. Marry! how could he marry in his circumstances? Was it possible that there was anything else that would answer the purpose, any compromise? His heart beat wildly with love and ardour and shame. What would she say? Would she understand him, though he could not understand himself?
“Mr. Ridsdale!” cried Lottie, shrinking back from him a little. She covered her face with her hands and began to cry, being overcome with so many emotions, one heaped on another. At another moment she would not have been surprised; she would have been able to lift her eyes to the glow of the full happiness which, in half-light, had been for weeks past the illumination of her life. But for the moment it dazzled her. She put up her hands between her and that ecstasy of light.
As for Rollo, very different were the thoughts in his mind. He thought Lottie as wise as himself: he thought she had investigated his words; had not found in them the one that is surety for all, and shrank from him. Shame overwhelmed him: the agony of a mind which was really honest and a heart which was full of tenderness, yet found themselves on the verge of dishonour. “Lottie!” he cried with anguish in his voice, “you do not understand me—you will not listen to me. Do not shrink as if I meant any harm.”