Lizzie passes this ordeal with a frightened, throbbing heart, but a polite, calm exterior, thankful to be very soon claimed for the next dance, and to leave Mr. Schuyler for the present at least. She is a foolish coquette, but not an evil-minded girl. Weak, vain, selfish, but not bad-hearted—she has really felt troubled by the mean way in which she has refused to clear her cousin of the suspicion which she has brought upon her, but her selfishness has prevailed in the matter. To protect herself has seemed to her of more consequence than to clear Elinor. And the possible consequence of her parents knowing all about this little escapade has not seemed to her at all pleasant to contemplate. And so she has been vacillating between the desire to do right and the fear of exposure ever since she has received Elinor’s letter. She is equally ignorant of how much she may be known to Mr. Schuyler, or how far she may be protected by her cousin’s magnanimity. She moreover finds Mr. Schuyler better than his photograph on inspection, as a handsome face generally is better than a photograph of it. Meanwhile, that gentleman has recollected that Elizabeth and Lizzie are the same name. He has been watching this airy, graceful
dancer, and he has seen that she has been observing him. Elinor is absolved from all blame in his mind. The only shred of mystery left is the name in that book of hers. Lizzie, resting after her last round dance, sees him approach with both dread and pleasure. He wastes no time in prefatory remarks, but says, “Miss Lennox, are you related to a Miss Elinor Lloyd?”
Lizzie has the command of this situation better than Mr. Schuyler. She knows the full purport of the question, but being asked by Elinor in a letter to speak the truth while she can yet hide it, and by handsome Fred Schuyler looking into her eyes, and knowing her for the girl he has been flirting with, are two very different matters. Here she may make a virtue of necessity, and perhaps a conquest at the same time. Ah! if our good deeds are viewed by the light of our motives, how very much the virtue in them seems to pale.
Lizzie says with charming candor, “Oh! yes, she is my cousin; do you know her?”
“Yes, Miss Lennox, and I saw your name in a book she had—Barnaby Rudge—and it appeared to have been quite attentively read, from the marginal notes I saw.”
Lizzie shows a momentary astonishment. “Why, Mr. Schuyler, the only copy of Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge I have is at home in the New Riverside set papa gave me only lately—since”—she pauses a little confused—“since I have seen Elly last. Besides, I don’t make notes on the margins of my books, and I am quite sure Elly would not in mine. I think it could not have been my name you saw.”
“Indeed, I saw it, ‘Elizabeth Lennox,’ and from your ‘brother Robert.’”
Lizzie laughs merrily, and she looks
the very image of innocent fun as she responds to this triumphant assertion.
“Oh! that’s a good joke! My brother Robert! Why, that’s papa! And the name is his sister’s. She is Elinor’s mother. Why didn’t she tell you! I hate such mysteries.” And she shoots such a glance as would once have been a challenge irresistible. He keeps up the badinage, but he is answering that question, “Why did she not tell you?” in a manner not flattering to Miss Lennox, but very much so to Miss Lloyd. The former young lady is not quite pleased with his abstracted manner. True, he dances with her, chats with her, compliments her, but she is not satisfied. She is wishing that this was the first intercourse she has had with Mr. Schuyler, and that he had nothing to remember of Lizzie Lennox, and no previous knowledge of her—she has an intuitive sense that she does not stand as well as her cousin in his estimation, and that her chance would have been better if she had never written to him. He, however, generously makes no allusion to that correspondence. He is ashamed of it for her, and heartily wishes it had never been. He is thinking how he can make his peace with her cousin, of whom he feels glad to think so well, when he is startled by the words.