The sky and garden swam round before her eyes. She said nothing, but waited.
“I only propose it for your sake,” he added more gently, startled at her pallor. “In marrying me, you run the risk of being poor. If that doesn’t frighten you, then it’s all right.”
Her color came back again; but no smile came with it. These shocks had been repeated too many times to find her with the same elasticity.
“This cannot go on a great while,” she said, folding her hands in her lap, and looking down. “Mamma cannot always be so unreasonable. The best way now is to make no opposition to her, whatever she proposes. I may be able to influence her as we wish after a while. You may be sure that I shall try. Meantime, let us be quiet. I have learned, Lawrence, never to contend unless I can be pretty sure of victory. It is a hard lesson, but we have to learn it, and many harder ones, too. The best way for you is to laugh and seem careless, whether you feel so or not. The one who laughs succeeds. It is strange, but the moment a person acts as if he felt humiliated, people seem to be possessed of a desire to humiliate him still more. It doesn’t do in the world to confess to any weakness or failure. I have always noticed that people stand in awe of those who appear to be perfectly self-confident and contented.”
Lawrence Gerald looked at her in surprise as she said this in a calm and steady way quite new to him. Some thought of her being strong and helpful in other ways besides money-bringing glanced through his mind. “You know the world at least, Annette,” he said, with a half-smile.
No smile nor word replied. She was looking back, and remembering how she had learned the world. She, a poor, low-born girl, ignorant but enthusiastic and daring, had been suddenly endowed with wealth, and thrown upon that world with no one to teach her how to act properly. She had learned by the sneers and bitterness, the ridicule and jibes, her blunders had excited. Mortification, anger, tears, and disappointments had taught her. Instead of having been led, she had been spurred along the way of life. She had seen her best intentions and most generous feelings held as nothing, because of some fault in their manifestation; had found the friendships she grasped at, believing them real, change to an evasive coldness with only a surface-froth of sweet pretence. Strife lay behind her, and, looking forward, she saw strife in the future. As she made this swift review, it happened to her as it has happened to others when some crisis or some strong emotion has forced them to lift their eyes from their immediate daily cares; and as the curtain veiling the future wavered in that breeze, they have caught a glimpse of life as a whole, and found it terrible. Perhaps in that moment Annette Ferrier saw nothing but dust and ashes in all her hopes of earthly happiness, and felt a brief longing to hide her face from them for ever.
“Your company are coming,” Lawrence said. He had been watching her with curiosity and surprise. It was the first time she had ever disregarded his presence, and the first time he had found her really worthy of respect.
She roused herself, not with a start, as if coming back to a real present from some trivial abstraction, but slowly and almost reluctantly, as though turning from weighty matters to attend to trifles.
“Can you be bright and cheerful now?” she asked, smiling on him with some unconscious superiority in her air. “These little things are not worth fretting for. All will come right, if we keep up our courage.”
As she held out her hand to him, he took it in his and carried it to his lips. “You’re a good creature!” he said most sincerely.