‘I cannot have you talk like this,’ she cried impatiently. ‘I have no more thought of the Bishop than I have of the Pope. I would much rather not have had him here to lunch at all. You said it would be necessary to do it, and an opportunity, and I thought it my duty to show some hospitality when he was coming so near, Mr. Torkingham’s house being so small. But of course I understood that the opportunity would be one for you in getting to know him, your prospects being so indefinite at present; not one for me.’
‘If you don’t follow up this chance of being spiritual queen of Melchester, you will never have another of being anything. Mind this, Viviette: you are not so young as you were. You are getting on to be a middle-aged woman, and your black hair is precisely of the sort which time quickly turns grey. You must make up your mind to grizzled bachelors or widowers. Young marriageable men won’t look at you; or if they do just now, in a year or two more they’ll despise you as an antiquated party.’
Lady Constantine perceptibly paled. ‘Young men what?’ she asked. ‘Say that again.’
‘I said it was no use to think of young men; they won’t look at you much longer; or if they do, it will be to look away again very quickly.’
‘You imply that if I were to marry a man younger than myself he would speedily acquire a contempt for me? How much younger must a man be than his wife—to get that feeling for her?’ She was resting her elbow on the chair as she faintly spoke the words, and covered her eyes with her hand.
‘An exceedingly small number of years,’ said Louis drily. ‘Now the Bishop is at least fifteen years older than you, and on that account, no less than on others, is an excellent match. You would be head of the church in this diocese: what more can you require after these years of miserable obscurity? In addition, you would escape that minor thorn in the flesh of bishops’ wives, of being only “Mrs.” while their husbands are peers.’
She was not listening; his previous observation still detained her thoughts.
‘Louis,’ she said, ‘in the case of a woman marrying a man much younger than herself, does he get to dislike her, even if there has been a social advantage to him in the union?’
‘Yes,—not a whit less. Ask any person of experience. But what of that? Let’s talk of our own affairs. You say you have no thought of the Bishop. And yet if he had stayed here another day or two he would have proposed to you straight off.’
‘Seriously, Louis, I could not accept him.’