If luncheon was a great meal, dinner was far more magnificent and stately; only there were two footmen instead of one, and his lordship felt that he could not do that justice to the dinner which the dinner deserved, because those two great hulking fellows in livery watched him all the time. After dinner they sat in the great drawing-room, feeling very magnificent, and yet uncomfortable.
"The second dinner," said his lordship, in a half-whisper, "made me feel, Clara Martha, that we did right to leave Canaan City. I never before knew what they really meant by enjoying a title, and I don't think I ever thoroughly enjoyed it before. The red mullet was beautiful, and the little larks in paper baskets made me feel a lord all over."
CHAPTER XXVII. THE SAME SIGNS.
"This he has done for love."
When Angela returned to her dressmakery, it was with these words ringing in her ears, like some refrain which continually returns and will not be silenced.
"This he has done—for love."
It was a great deal to do—a great deal to give up; she fully realized, after her talk with Lord Jocelyn, how much it was that he had given up—at her request. What had she herself done, she asked, in comparison? She had given money—anybody could give money. She had lived in disguise, under false pretences, for a few months; but she never intended to go on living in the East End, after she had set her association on a firm basis. To be sure, she had been drawn on into wider schemes, and could not retire until these, including the Palace of Delight, were well started. But this young man had given up all, cheerfully, for her sake. Because she was a dressmaker, and lived at Stepney, he would be a workman and live there as well. For her sake he had given up for ever the life of ease and culture which might have been his, among the gentlefolk to whom he belonged; for her sake he left the man who stood to him in loco parentis; for her sake he gave up all things that are dear to young men, and became a servant. And without a murmur. She watched him going to his work in the morning, cheerful, with the sunshine ever in his face—in fact, sunshine lived there—his head erect, his eyes fearless, not repenting at all of his choice, perhaps hopeful that in the long run those impediments spoken of might be removed; in that hope he lived. Should that hope be disappointed—what then? Only to have loved, to have sacrificed so much for the sake of love, Angela said to herself, thinking of something she had read, was enough. Then she laughed, because this was so silly, and the young man deserved to have some reward.
Then, as a first result of this newly acquired knowledge, the point of view seemed changed. Quite naturally, after the first surprise at finding so much cultivation in a working-man, she regarded him, like all the rest, from her own elevated platform. In the same way he, from his own elevation, had been, in a sense, looking down upon herself, though she did not suspect the fact. One might pause here, in order to discuss how many kinds of people do consider themselves on a higher level than their neighbors. My own opinion is that every man thinks himself on so very high a platform as to entitle him to consider the greater part of mankind quite below him; the fact that no one else thinks so has nothing to do with it. Any one, however, can understand how Angela would at first regard Harry, and Harry the fair dressmaker. Further, that, whatever acquaintance or intimacy grew up between them, the first impression would always remain, with the mental attitude of a slight superiority in both minds, so long as the first impression, the first belief as to the real facts, was not removed. Now that it was removed on one side, Angela, for her part, could no longer look down; there was no superiority left, except in so far as the daughter of a Whitechapel brewer might consider herself of finer clay than the son of a sergeant in the army, also of Whitechapel origin.
All for love of her.