"Is it so entirely a matter of indifference that you can accept my advice?"
"It is quite a matter of indifference," said the girl, calmly.
"Do you love him, Annie?" said the old woman.
For one brief second the girl's thoughts flashed to the man whom she did love; but they returned with only a vague impression of pain and doubt. She had not had time to sit down and reason out her course of duty. She could only judge as yet by the feelings awakened by the Count's proposal, and the pictures which it exhibited to her mind.
"Do I love him, mother?" she said, in a low voice. "I like him very well, and I am sure he is very fond of me; I am quite sure of that."
"And what do you say yourself about it?"
"What can I say? If I marry him," she said, coldly, "it will give him pleasure, and I know he will be kind to me and to you. It is his wish—not mine. We should not be asking or receiving a favour, mother. I suppose he loves me as well as he loves any one; and I suppose I can make as good a wife as any one else."
There was in this speech the faint indication of a bitterness having its root in a far deeper bitterness, which had suggested the whole tone of this interview. When Mrs. Christmas thought the girl was laughing cruelly at a man who had paid her the highest compliment in his power, when she saw this girl exhibiting an exaggerated heartlessness in talking of the proposed marriage as a marriage of convenience, she did not know that this indifference and heartlessness were but the expression of a deep, and hopeless, and despairing love.
"Poverty is not a nice thing, mother; and until I should have established myself as a teacher of music, we should have to be almost beggars. The Count offers us a pleasant life; and I dare say I can make his dull house a little more cheerful to him. It is a fair bargain. He did not ask me if I loved him: probably he did not see the necessity any more than I do. What he proposes will be a comfortable arrangement for all of us."
Mrs. Christmas looked at the calm, beautiful, sad face, and said nothing.