“At Nice! Sir Simon Harness has asked me over to stay at his villa there; the De la Bourbonais are there, you know. You’ll be glad to hear that Franceline has made a splendid recovery of it, and the count has picked up wonderfully too.… Oh! I beg a thousand pardons. Pray allow me!…” This was to an old lady whose umbrella he had whisked into the middle of the street with a touch of his stick, that he kept swinging round while he held forth to Clide. When he had picked it up and dusted it, and apologized three times over, he went on to say: “Why shouldn’t you run over and see them all too, eh? You used to be very friendly with the count, eh? And Sir Simon would be enchanted to see you. There’s nothing he likes so much as being come down on by a friend unawares, you know.”
“I never gratify my friends in
that respect,” said Clide freezingly; “I always wait to be invited. Are you to be a large party at the villa?”
“I don’t fancy so; but I really don’t know. The only invitations I know of are myself and Roxham. He’s a capital fellow, Roxham; I’m glad we are going together. I wish you’d come too, though, eh? Perhaps you’ll think it over and pop down on us one of these days when we least expect it? Have you any message for Sir Simon or any of them?”
“My best respects to M. de la Bourbonais and his daughter. Good-afternoon. A pleasant journey to you!”
“Wish me good-luck about the leave first!” said the good-natured, obtuse dragoon as he strode on, laughing.
“The lumbering idiot! How I should like to kick him! The impudence of the lout calling her Franceline!” This was Mr. de Winton’s soliloquy as he stood looking after Ponsonby, giving at the same time a pull to the bell as if the house were on fire.
The admiral was out. Cromer, his old valet, who had first sounded the signal about Isabel, happened to be at his master’s for the day, and said he believed he had gone to see Master Clide. Clide jumped back into his cab and told the man to go like the wind, as he wanted to overtake some one. His reflections on the way were none of the pleasantest. What was bringing Ponsonby Anwyll to spend a month at Sir Simon’s while M. de la Bourbonais and his daughter were there? What but to marry Franceline? Had she, then, so completely forgotten Clide? Why not? If his love for her had a tithe of the unselfishness it boasted, he ought to be the first to rejoice at it; to be glad that she was happy
and was about to become the wife of a good and honorable and warm-hearted man whom she loved. Did she love him? could she love him?—a lump of red and white clay with as much soul as a prize bull! She that was such an ethereal, lily creature—how could it be possible? What could any girl see in him to love? If this was an irrational and unfair estimate of Ponsonby’s outward and inward man, it was natural enough on Clide’s part. No man, be he ever so reasonable, is expected to do justice to the claims of any other man to be preferred by the woman he loves. But Clide was more savage with Sir Simon even than with Anwyll. What business had he to go meddling at making a match for Franceline? Why could he not have let her alone, and let destiny take its course—or, to put it in a more concrete shape, let Clide de Winton take his chance? Clide did not consider that his chance virtually had no existence whatever in Sir Simon’s calculations. He believed that Isabel’s identity was established beyond a doubt, and that this fact, much as he might regret it, excluded Clide for ever from having any part in Franceline’s destiny. He believed, moreover, or he wished to believe—which with the sanguine Sir Simon meant one and the same thing—that Clide had quite got over his passion malheureuse for Franceline, but, whether he had or not, it could not be helped; he could not marry her, and it was preposterous to expect that she was to remain unmarried out of consideration for his feelings. Here was an admirable settlement in life that presented itself, and it was Sir Simon’s duty, as her self-elected guardian and her father’s oldest friend, to do all in his power to secure it to her.
Oh! but if Franceline would but wait a little longer—it might be such a very little while—until Clide was free! “What a pitiful thing a woman’s love is compared to a man’s! If I had been in her position, and she in mine,” he thought, “I would have waited a lifetime for her!”