“Perhaps not. Let us talk of something else. Do you really think, without any nonsense, that all your good repute and welfare depend on the payment of the money which you lost?”
“How can you ask me such a stupid question? I never could lift up my head again—but it is not myself, not at all myself—it is what will be said of the family, Alice. And I do not see how the raising of the money can interfere at all with you.”
“No, no, of course not,” she said, and then she turned away and looked out of the window, reflecting that Hilary was right enough. Neither loss nor gain of money could long interfere at all with her.
“Good-bye, darling,” she said at last, forgiving his sick petulance, and putting back his curly hair, and kissing his white forehead—“Good-bye, darling I must not stay; I always seem to excite you so. You will not think me unkind, I am sure; but you may not see me again for ever—oh, ever so long; I have so much to do before I am ready for—my wedding.”
Hilary allowed himself to be kissed with brotherly resignation; and then he called merrily after her—“Now, Lallie, mind, you must look your best. You are going to make a grand match, you know. Don’t be astonished if you see me there. Why don’t you answer?”
She would not look round, because of the expression of her face, which she could not conceal in a moment—“I am not at all sure,” said the brother wisely, as the sister shut the door and fled, “that the man who marries Alice won’t almost have caught a Tartar. She is very sweet-tempered; but the good Lord knows that she is determined also. Now Mabel is quite another sort of girl,” &c., &c.—reflections which he may be left to reflect.
Alice Lorraine, having none to advise with, and being in her firm heart set to do the right thing without flinching, through dark days and through weary nights had been striving to make sure what was the one right thing to do. It was plain that the honour of her race must be saved at her expense. By reason of things she had no hand in, it had come to pass that her poor self stood in everybody’s way. Her poor self was full of life, and natural fun, and mind perhaps a little above the average. No other self in the world could find it harder to go out of the world; to be a self no more peradventure, but a wandering something. To lose the sight, and touch, and feeling of the light, and life, and love; not to have the influence even of the weather on them; to lie in a hollow place, forgotten, cast aside, and dreaded; never more to have, or wish for, power to say yes or no.
This was all that lay before her, if she acted truly. As to marrying a man she scorned—she must scorn herself ere she thought of it. She knew that she was nothing very great; and her little importance was much pulled down by the want of any one to love her; but her purity was her own inborn right; and nobody should sell or buy it.
“I will go to my father once more,” she thought; “he cannot refuse to see me. I will not threaten. That would be low. But if he cares at all to look, he will know from my face what I mean to do. He used, if I had the smallest pain, he used to know it in a moment. But now he cares not for a pain that seems to gnaw my life away. Perhaps it is my own fault. Perhaps I have been too proud to put it so. I have put it defiantly, and not begged. I will beg, I will beg; on my knees I will beg! I will cry, as I never cried before, oh, father, father, father!”
Perhaps if she had won this chance, she might even yet have vanquished. For her last reflection was true enough. She had been too defiant, and positive in her strength of will towards her father. She had never tried the power of tears and prayers, and a pet child’s eloquence. And her father no doubt, had felt this change in her attitude towards him, and had therefore believed more readily his mother’s repeated assertions, that nothing stood in the way of a most desirable arrangement, except the coyness of a spirited girl, whose fancy was not taken.