"No; if I once ceased to believe in your truth or honor, as I believe in my own, I should part from you forever, though God knows what it would cost me!"
"God knows what it would cost me! But I give you free leave. The instant you find a flaw in either, I am no longer worthy of your love; withdraw it, and I will never complain. But trust me you must and will; I merit your confidence, and I exact it. Look at me, Ernest. Do you believe I could ever deceive you?"
He looked into her eyes long and earnestly.
"No. When you do, your eyes will droop before mine. I trust you, Beatrice, fully, and I know you will never wrong it."
She clung to him with caressant softness, softer in her than in a meeker-spirited woman, as she whispered, 'Never!' and a man would need have been obtuse and skeptical, indeed, who could then have doubted her. And so that cloud blew over, for a time, at the least—trusted, Beatrice Boville was soft and gentle as a lamb; mistrusted or misjudged, she was fiery as a young lioness, and Earlscourt, I thought, though originally won by her intellect, held her too much as a child to fully understand her character, and to see that, though she was his darling and plaything, she was also a passionate, ardent, proud-spirited woman, stung by injustice and impatient of doubt. No two people could be more fitted to make each other's happiness, yet it struck me that it was just possible they might make each other's misery very completely, through want of comprehension on the one side, through want of explanation on the other.
"Your marriage is fixed, isn't it, Earlscourt?" asked his sister, Lady Clive Edghill, who had come to Lemongenseidlitz, and, though compelled by him, as he compelled all the rest of the family, to show Beatrice strict courtesy, disliked her, because she was not an advantageous match, was much too young in their opinion, and had no money—the gravest crimes a woman can have in the eyes of any man's relatives. "The 14th! Indeed! yours is a very short engagement!"
"Is there any reason why it should be longer?"
"O, dear, no! none that I am aware of. I wish, earnestly, my dear Earlscourt, I could congratulate you more warmly; but I can never say what I do not feel, and I had so much hoped—"
"My dear Helena, as long as I have so much reason to congratulate myself, it matters very little whether you do or do not," smiled Earlscourt. He was too much of a lion to be stung by gnats.
"I dare say. I sincerely trust you may ever have reason. But I heard some very disagreeable things about that Mr. Boville, Beatrice's father. Do you know that he was in a West India regiment, but was deprived of his commission even there?—a perfect blackleg and sharper, I understand. I suppose she has never mentioned him to you?"