He went out before me into the soft night air. His carriage was waiting; he entered it, threw himself back on its cushions, and was driven off before I had time to break my word of honor to Beatrice Boville, which I felt sorely tempted to do just then. Who among the thousands that heard his briliant speech that night, or read it the next morning, who saw him pass in his carriage, and had him pointed out to them as the finest orator of his day, or dined with him at his ministerial dinners at his house in Park Lane, would have believed that, with all his ambition, fame, honors, and attainments, the one cross, the one shadow, the one dark thread, in the successful stateman's life, was due to a woman's hand, and that underneath all his strength lay that single weakness, sapping and undermining it?
"Did you see that girl Boville at the House last night?" Lady Clive (who had smiled most sweetly ever since her thorns had brought forth their fruit—her son would be his heir—Earlscourt would never marry now!) said to me, the next day, at one of the Musical Society concerts. "Incredible effrontery, wasn't it, in her, to come and hear Earlscourt's speech? One would have imagined that conscience and delicacy might have made her reluctant to see him, instead of letting her voluntarily seek his own legislative chamber, and listen coolly for an hour and a half to the man whom she misled and deceived so disgracefully."
I laughed to think how long a time a woman's malice will flourish, n'importe how victorious it may have been in crushing its object, or how harmless that object may have become.
"You are very bitter about her still, Lady Clive. Is that quite fair? You know you were so much obliged to her for throwing Earlscourt away. You want Horace to come in for the title, don't you?" Which truism being unpalatable, Lady Clive averred that she had no wish on earth but for Earlscourt's happiness; that of course she naturally grieved for his betrayal by that little intrigante, but that had his marriage been a well-advised one, nobody would have rejoiced more, etc., etc., and bade me be silent and listen to Vieuxtemps, both of which commands I obeyed, pondering in my own mind whether I should go and call in Lowndes Square or not: if anybody heard of it, they would think it odd for me alone, of all the family, to continue acquainted with a girl whom report (circulated through Lady Clive) said had used Earlscourt so ill, and wrong constructions might get put upon it; but, thank God! I never have considered the qu'en dira-t-on. If constructions are wrong, to the deuce with them! they matter nothing to sensible people; and the man who lives in dread of "reports" will have to shift his conduct as the old man of immortal fable shifted his donkey, and won't ever journey in any peace at all. If anybody remarked my visiting Lowndes Square, I couldn't help it: I wanted to see Beatrice Boville again, and to Lowndes Square, after the concert, I drove my tilbury accordingly, which, as that turn-out is known pretty tolerably in those parts, I should be wisest to leave behind me when I don't want my calls noticed. By good fortune, I saw Beatrice alone. They were going to drive in the Park, and she was in the drawing room, dressed and waiting for her aunt. She was not altered: at her age sorrow doesn't tell physically as it does at Earlscourt's. In youth we have Hope; later on we know that of all the gifts of Pandora's box none are so treacherous and delusive as the one that Pandora left at the bottom. True, Beatrice had none of that insouciant, shadowless brightness that had been her chief charm at Lemongenseidlitz, but she was one of those women whose attractions, dependent on fascination, not on beauty, grow more instead of less as time goes on. She met me with a trace of embarrassment; but she was always self-possessed under any amount of difficulties, and stood chatting, a trifle hurriedly, of all the subjects of the year, of anything, I dare say, rather than of that speech the night before, or of the secret of which I was her sole confidant. But I was not going to let her off so easily. I had come there for a definite purpose, and was not going away without accomplishing it. I was afraid every second that Lady Mechlin might come down, or some visitor enter, and as she sat in a low chair among the flowers in the window, leant towards her, and plunged into it in medias res.
"Miss Boville, I want you to release me from my promise."
She looked up, her face flushing slightly, but her lips and eyes shadowed already with that determined pride and hauteur that they had worn the last time I had seen her. She did not speak, but played with the boughs of a coronella near her.
"You remember" (I went on speaking as briefly as possible, lest the old lady's toilet should be finished, and our tête-à-tête cut short) "I gave you my word of honor never to speak again of what you told me in the Kursaal last autumn until you gave me leave; that leave I ask you for now. Silence lies in the way of your own happiness, I feel sure, and not alone of yours. If you give me carte blanche, you may be certain I shall use it discreetly and cautiously. You made the prohibition in a moment of heat and passion; withdraw it now—believe me, you will never repent."
The flush died out of her cheeks as I spoke; but her little, white teeth were set together as they had been that night, and she answered me bitterly,—
"You ask what is impossible; I cannot, in justice to myself, withdraw it. I would never have told you, but that I deemed you a man of honor, whom I could trust."
"I do not think I have proved myself otherwise, Beatrice. I have kept my word to you, when I have been greatly tempted to break it, when I have doubted whether it were either right or wise to stand on such punctilio, when greater stakes were involved by my silence. Surely, if you once had elevated mind enough to comprehend and admire such a man as Earlscourt, and be won by the greatness of his intellect to prefer him to younger rivals, it is impossible you can have lowered your taste and found any one to replace him. No woman who once loved Earlscourt could stoop to an inferior man, and almost all men are his inferiors; it is impossible you can have grown cold towards him."