"Why won't he answer?" thought Lady Marabout. "That I have not been blind to your very marked attention to my dear Cecil, I think you must be aware, Mr. Cheveley, and it is on that subject, indeed, that I——"
"Wished to speak to me? I understand!" said Cheveley as she paused, with that faint smile, half sad, half proud, that perplexed Lady Marabout. "You are about to insinuate to me gently that those attentions have been exceedingly distasteful to you, exceedingly unacceptable in me; you would remind me that Lady Cecil Ormsby is a beauty and an heiress, and that I am a fortune-hunter, whose designs are seen through and motives found out; you would hint to me that our intercourse must cease: is it not so?"
Lady Marabout, cursed with that obstinate, ill-bred, unextinguishable weakness for truth incidental and ever fatal to the De Bonc[oe]urs, couldn't say that it was not what she was going to observe to him, but it was exceedingly unpleasant, now it was put in such plain, uncomplimentary terms, to admit to the man's face that she was about to tell him he was a mercenary schemer, whose attentions only sprang from a lawless passion for the beaux yeux of Cecil's cassette.
She would have told him all that, and much more, with greatest dignity and effect, if he hadn't anticipated her; but to have her weapon parried before it was fairly out of its sheath unnerved her arm at the outset.
"What would Anne Hautton do? Dear me! there never was anybody perpetually placed in such wretched positions as I am!" thought Lady Marabout, as she played with her parasol, and murmured something not very clear relative to "responsibility" and "not desirable," two words as infallibly a part of Lady Marabout's stock in trade as a sneer at the "swells" is of Punch's. How she sighed for some cold, nonchalant, bitter sentence, such as the Hautton répertoire could have supplied! how she scorned herself for her own weakness and lack of severity! But she would not have relished hurting a burglar's feelings, though she had seen him in the very act of stealing her jewel-boxes, by taxing him with the theft; and though the Ogre must be crushed, the crushing began to give Lady Marabout neuralgic twinges. She was no more able to say the stern things she had rehearsed and resolved upon, than she was able to stab him with her parasol, or strangle him with her handkerchief.
"I guessed rightly what you were about to say to me?" said Cheveley, who seemed somehow or other to have taken all the talk into his own hands, and to have become the master of the position. "I thought so. I do not wonder at your construction; I cannot blame you for your resolution. Lady Cecil has some considerable fortune, they say; it is very natural that you should have imagined a man like myself, with no wealth save a good name, which only serves to make lack of wealth more conspicuous, incapable of seeking her society for any better, higher, more disinterested motive than that of her money; it was not charitable, perhaps, to decide unhesitatingly that it was impossible I could be drawn to her by any other attraction, that it was imperative I must be dead to everything in her that gives her a nobler and a higher charm; but it was very natural, and one learns never to hope for the miracle of a charitable judgment, even from Lady Marabout!"
"My dear Mr. Cheveley, indeed you mistake!" began Lady Marabout, restlessly. That was a little bit of a story, he didn't mistake at all; but Lady Marabout, collapsing like an india-rubber ball under the prick of a sarcasm, shivered all over at his words, his voice, his slight sad smile. "The man is as dreadful as Cecil," she thought; "he puts things so horribly clearly!"
"Mistake? I do not think I do. You have thought all this, and very naturally; but now hear me for a moment. I have sought Lady Cecil's society, that is perfectly true; we have been thrown together in society, very often accidentally; sometimes, I admit, through my own seeking. Few men could be with her and be steeled against her. I have been with her too much; but I sought her at first carelessly, then irresistibly and unconsciously, never with the motive you attribute to me. I am not as utterly beggared as you deem me, but neither am I entirely barren of honor. Believe me, Lady Marabout, my pride alone would be amply sufficient to raise a barrier between me and Cecil stronger than any that could be opposed to me by others. Yesterday I casually overheard words from Amandine which showed me that society, like you, has put but one construction on the attention I have paid her—a construction I might have foreseen had I not been unconsciously fascinated, and forgetful, for the time, of the infallible whispers of my kind friends. Her fortune, I know, was never numbered among her attractions for me; so little, that now that Amandine's careless words have reminded me of the verdict of society, I shall neither seek her nor see her again. Scores of men marry women for their money, and their money alone, but I am not one of them; with my own precarious fortunes, only escaping ruin because I am not rich enough to tempt ruin. I would never take advantage of any interest I may have excited in her, to speak to her of a passion that the world would tell her was only another name for avarice and selfishness. I dare not trust myself with her longer, perhaps. I am no god to answer for my self-control; but you need not fear; I will never seek her love—never even tell her of mine. I shall leave town to-morrow; what I may suffer matters not. Lady Cecil is safe from me! Whatever you may have heard of my faults, follies, or vices, none ever told you, I think, that I broke my word?"
"And when the man said that, my dear Philip, I assure you I felt as guilty as if I had done him some horrible wrong; he stood there with his head up, looking at me with his sad proud eyes—and they are beautiful!—till, positively, I could almost have cried—I could, indeed, for though I don't like him on principle, I couldn't help pitying him," said Lady Marabout, in a subsequent relation of the scene to her son. "Wasn't it a terrible position? I was as near as possible forgetting everything due to poor Rosediamond, and saying to him that I believed Cecil liked him and would never like anybody else, but, thank Heaven! I remembered myself, and checked myself in time. If it had been anybody but Chandos Cheveley, I should really have admired him, he spoke so nobly! When he lifted his hat and left me, though I ought to have been glad (and I was glad, of course) that Cecil would be free from the society of anybody so objectionable and so dangerous, I felt wretched for him—I did indeed. It is so hard always to be placed in such miserable positions!"