Her fine eyes sparkled as she answered, “That is why I hate flattery. Honest people won’t flatter. I always look upon a compliment as the mask of some sentiment which would be very offensive were it exposed.”
“That’s an extreme view. A man may sometimes flatter with the wish to please; and whom should he wish to please but his sweetheart?”
“I would rather not be complimented by the man I love.”
“He’ll have to be dumb, then,” said I.
“I will agree with you in this,” said she, with a smile, “a girl with money is under great disadvantages as regards courtship and marriage. For she may love a man whose sensitiveness finds an obstacle in her fortune, and keeps him back, lest a proposal should subject him to misconstruction. Or she may meet with a man who sincerely loves her, but whose sincerity she distrusts because she has money. Now a girl without money knows very well that when an offer is made her, she is loved only for herself. That feeling is worth more than the largest fortune, I should think.”
“Girls,” said I, “must find out the truth for themselves, as men have to do. Marriage is a game that takes two to play. The man has just as much right to suspect the girl’s sincerity, as the girl has to suspect his. They ought, both of them, to be above suspicion. Loyalty begets loyalty. Where doubt is——whoa!”
Here my horse stumbled, and I barely saved my hat from falling. The movement of my horse startled hers, and away we galloped. Talk was at an end between us; but though many of my faculties were engrossed by the labour of keeping my seat, I could still think. Was Theresa disappointed? Had she a worm i’ the bud? What made her so sensitive about money? She talked very candidly; but then she knew I was in love, and that knowledge conferred on us both privileges we could hardly have exercised had my affections been disengaged. What a change, mon Dieu! from the rude vixen of yesterday! I couldn’t conceive a more agreeable girl than she. Considering that she must still be embarrassed by the memory of her behaviour to me, her ease was wonderful, her amiability delightful.
We had turned, by this time, into a long lane, with a tall hedge on either side of us, and plenty of trees, which, however, did not protect us from the sun. I have no doubt the country around looked very beautiful, and golden and green, with flashes of yellow light here, and splashes of some other kind of colour there—crammed, in a word, with a thousand effects, such as, properly catalogued here, would entitle me to a place in English fiction second only to that occupied by the immortal author of Black’s picturesque Guide Books. But to speak the truth, I was thinking too much about my neck to remark the beautiful and the lovely; for my horse, on entering the lane, had indescribably shocked me by shying at an old man in a blouse, and from that moment I was afflicted with misgivings.
Happily the Ruins were at the end of the lane. We came to an open grassy space, my cousin halted, and pointed to some pieces of wall here and there, supporting what might have been the frame of a window in the reign of St. Lucius.
“Hallo! a fire!” said I, imagining for the moment that here were the remains of a house that had very nearly been burnt to the ground.