She was standing before him with her eyes cast down, apparently determined to be very moderate in her speech. But there was a cruel frankness in her words which hurt Mr. Roscorla a good deal more than any tempest of passion into which she might have worked herself. "Is that all?" said he. "You have not startled me with any revelations."
"I was going to say," continued Mabyn, "that a gentleman who has really a regard for a girl would not insist on her keeping a promise which only rendered her unhappy. I don't see what you are to gain by it. I suppose you—you expect Wenna to marry you? Well, I dare say if you called on her to punish herself that way, she might do it. But what good would that do you? Would you like to have a wife who was in love with another man?"
"You have become quite logical, Miss Mabyn," said he, "and argument suits you better than getting into a rage. And much of what you say is quite true. You are a very young girl. You don't know much of what the world would say about anything. But being furnished with these admirable convictions, did it never occur to you that you might not be acting wisely in blundering into an affair of which you know nothing?"
The coldly sarcastic fashion in which he spoke threatened to disturb Mabyn's forced equanimity. "Know nothing?" she said. "I know everything about it, and I can see that my sister is miserable: that is sufficient reason for my interference. Mr. Roscorla, you won't ask her to marry you?"
Had the proud and passionate Mabyn condescended to make an appeal to her ancient enemy? At last she raised her eyes, and they seemed to plead for mercy.
"Come, come," he said, roughly: "I've had enough of all this sham beseeching. I know what it means. Trelyon is a richer man than I am: she has let her idle girlish notions go dreaming day-dreams, and so I am expected to stand aside. There has been enough of this nonsense. She is not a child; she knows what she undertook of her own free will; and she knows she can get rid of this school-girl fancy directly if she chooses. I, for one, won't help her to disgrace herself."
Mabyn began to breathe a little more quickly. She had tried to be reasonable; she had even humbled herself and begged from him; now there was a sensation in her chest as of some rising emotion that demanded expression in quick words. "You will try to make her marry you?" said she, looking him in the face.
"I will try to do nothing of the sort," said he. "She can do as she likes. But she knows what an honorable woman would do."
"And I," said Mabyn, her temper at length quite getting the better of her, "I know what an honorable man would do. He would refuse to bind a girl to a promise which she fears. He would consider her happiness to be of more importance than his comfort. Why, I don't believe you care at all whether Wenna marries you or not: it is only you can't bear her being married to the man she really does love. It is only envy, that's what it is. Oh, I am ashamed to think there is a man alive who would force a girl into becoming his wife on such terms!"
"There is certainly one considerable objection to my marrying your sister," said he with great politeness. "The manners of some of her relatives might prove embarrassing."