Pride and determination were written in every line of her face, in the very arch of her eyebrows, the very form of her brow, the very curve of her lips—a soft, delicate face enough otherwise, but as expressive of indomitable pride as any face could be. And yet, though I swore at her as I drove Cognac out of the square, I couldn't help liking her all the better for it, the little Pythoness! for, after all, it was natural and very intelligible to me—she had been misjudged and wrongly suspected, and the noblest spirits are always the quickest to rebel against injustice and resent false accusation.
V.
HOW IN PERFECT INNOCENCE I PLAYED THE PART OF A RIVAL.
The season whirled and spun along as usual. They were having stormy debates in the Lower House, and throwing out bills in the Upper; stifled by Thames odors one evening, and running down to Epsom the next morning; blackguarding each other in parliamentary language—which, on my honor, will soon want duels revived to keep it within decent breeding, if Lord Robert Cecil and others don't learn better manners, and remember the golden rule that "He alone resorts to vituperation whose argument is illogical and weak." We, luckier dogs, who weren't slaves to St. Stephen's, nor to anything at all except as parsons and moralists, with whom the grapes sont verts et bons pour des goujats, said to our own worldly vitiated tastes and evil leanings, spent our hours in the Ring and the coulisses, White's and the United, crush balls and opera suppers, and swore we were immeasurably bored, though we wouldn't have led any other life for half a million. The season whirled along. Earlscourt devoted himself more entirely than ever to public life; he filled one of the most onerous and important posts in the ministry, and appeared to occupy himself solely with home politics and foreign politics. Lady Mechlin, only a baronet's widow, though she had very tolerable society of her own, was not in his monde; and Beatrice Boville and he, with only Hyde Park Corner between them, might as well, for any chance of rapprochement, have been severally at Spitzbergen and Cape Horn. Two or three times they passed each other in Pall-Mall and the Ride; but Earlscourt only lifted his hat to Lady Mechlin, and Beatrice set her little teeth together, and wouldn't have solicited a glance from him to save her life. Earlscourt was excessively distant to me after seeing my tilbury at her door; no doubt he thought it strange for me to have continued my intimacy with a woman who had wronged him so bitterly. He said nothing, but I could see he was exceedingly displeased; and the more I tried to smooth it with him, the more completely I seemed to set my foot in it. It was exceedingly difficult to touch on any obnoxious subject with him; he was never harsh or discourteous, but he could freeze the atmosphere about him gently, but so completely, that no mortal could pierce through it; and, fettered by my promise to her and his prohibition to me, I hardly knew how to bring up her name. As the Fates would have it, I often met Beatrice myself, at the Regent Park fêtes, at concerts, at a Handel Festival at Sydenham, at one or two dinner parties; and, as she generally made way for me beside her, and was one of those women who are invariably, though without effort, admired and surrounded in any society, possibly people remarked it—possibly our continued intimacy might have come round to Earlscourt, specially as Lady Clive and Mrs Breloques abused me roundly, each à sa mode, for countenancing that "abominable intrigante." I couldn't help it, even if Earlscourt took exception at me for it. I knew the girl was not to blame, and I took her part, and tried my best to tame the little Pythoness into releasing me from my promise. But Beatrice was firm; had she erred, no one would have acknowledged and atoned for it quicker, but innocent and wrongly accused, she kept silent, coûte que coûte, and in my heart I sympathized with her. Nothing stings so sharply, nothing is harder to forgive, than injustice; and, knowing herself to be frank, honorable, and open as the day, his charge of falsehood and deception rankled in her only more keenly as time went on. Men ran after her like mad; she had more of them about her than many beauties or belles. There was a style, a charm, a something in her that sent beauties into the shade, and by which, had she chosen, she could soon have replaced Earlscourt. Still, it needed to be no Lavater to see, by the passionate gleam of her eyes and the haughty pride on her brow, that Beatrice Boville was not happy.
"Why will you let pride and punctilio wreck your own life, Beatrice?" I asked her, in a low tone, as we stood before one of Ed. Warren's delicious bits of woodland in the Water-Color Exhibition, where we had chanced to meet one day. "That he should have judged you as he did was not unnatural. Think! how was it possible for him to guess your father was your companion? Remember how very much circumstances were against you."
"Had they been ten times more against me, a man who cared for me would have believed in me, and stood by me, not condemned me on the first suspicion. It was unchivalrous, ungenerous, unjust. I tell you, his words are stamped into my memory forever. I shall never forgive them."
"Not even if you knew that he suffered as much and more than you do?"
She clinched her hands on the rolled-up catalogue with a passionate gesture.
"No; because he misjudged me. Anything else I would have pardoned, though I am no patient Griselda, to put up tamely with any wrong; but that I never could—I never would!"