“I don’t see why you should speak like that of Sydney,” cried Lydia, with some show of spirit. “It’s rather ungrateful seeing how kind he has been to you.”
Which was true; Olivia admitted it.
“But the man who is kind to you, in a social way, isn’t always the man you would like to marry.”
“But it’s I, not you,” Lydia protested, “who am going to marry him.”
“Then you are going to marry him?”
“I don’t see anything else to do,” replied Lydia, and she went again over the twenty thousand a year argument. Olivia saw that her hesitations were those of a cool brain and not of an ardent spirit, and she knew that the brain had already come to a decision.
“I quite see,” said Lydia half apologetically, “that you think I ought to wait until I fall in love with a man. But I should have to wait till Doomsday. I thought I was in love with poor dear Fred. But I wasn’t. I’m not that sort. If Fred had gone on living I should have gone on letting him adore me and have been perfectly happy—so long as he didn’t expect me to adore him.”
“Doesn’t Mr. Rooke expect you to adore him?” asked Olivia.
Lydia laughed, showing her white teeth, and shook a wise and mirthful head.
“I’m convinced that was the secret of his first unhappy marriage.”