don’t understand,” she said; “Mr. Clavering is not poor; but uncle is rich. I shall be a queen—” There she paused, trembling, and falling on my breast. “Oh, it sounds mercenary, I know, but it is the fault of my bringing up. I have been taught to worship money. I would be utterly lost without it. And yet”—her whole face softening with the light of another emotion, “I cannot say to Henry Clavering, ‘Go! my prospects are dearer to me than you!’ I cannot, oh, I cannot!”
“You love him, then?” said I, determined to get at the truth of the matter if possible.
She rose restlessly. “Isn’t that a proof of love? If you knew me, you would say it was.” And, turning, she took her stand before a picture that hung on the wall of my sitting-room.
“That looks like me,” she said.
It was one of a pair of good photographs I possessed.
“Yes,” I remarked, “that is why I prize it.”
She did not seem to hear me; she was absorbed in gazing at the exquisite face before her. “That is a winning face,” I heard her say. “Sweeter than mine. I wonder if she would ever hesitate between love and money. I do not believe she would,” her own countenance growing gloomy and sad as she said so; “she would think only of the happiness she would confer; she is not hard like me. Eleanore herself would love this girl.”
I think she had forgotten my presence, for at the mention of her cousin’s name she turned quickly round with a half suspicious look, saying lightly:
“My dear old Mamma Hubbard looks horrified. She did not know she had such a very unromantic little wretch for a listener, when she was telling all those wonderful stories of Love slaying dragons, and living in caves, and walking over burning ploughshares as if they were tufts of spring grass?”
“No,” I said, taking her with an irresistible impulse of admiring affection into my arms; “but if I had, it would have made no difference. I should still have talked about love, and of all it can do to make this weary workaday world sweet and delightful.”
“Would you? Then you do not think me such a wretch?”
What could I say? I thought her the winsomest being in the world, and frankly told her so. Instantly she brightened into her very gayest self. Not that I thought then, much less do I think now, she partially cared for my good opinion; but her nature demanded admiration, and unconsciously blossomed under it, as a flower under the sunshine.
“And you will still let me come and tell you how bad I am,—that is, if I go on being bad, as I doubtless shall to the end of the chapter? You will not turn me off?”
“I will never turn you off.”
“Not if I should do a dreadful thing? Not if I should run away with my lover some fine night, and leave uncle to discover how his affectionate partiality had been requited?”
It was lightly said, and lightly meant, for she did not even wait for my reply. But its seed sank deep into our two hearts for all that. And for the next few days I spent my time in planning how I should manage, if it should ever fall to my lot to conduct to a successful issue so enthralling a piece of business as an elopement. You may imagine, then, how delighted I was, when one evening Hannah, this unhappy girl who is now lying dead under my roof, and who was occupying the position of lady’s maid to Miss Mary Leavenworth at that time, came to my door with a note from her mistress, running thus:
“Have the loveliest story of the season ready for me tomorrow; and
let the prince be as handsome as—as some one you have heard of,
and the princess as foolish as your little yielding pet,
“MARY.”
Which short note could only mean that she was engaged. But the next day did not bring me my Mary, nor the next, nor the next; and beyond hearing that Mr. Leavenworth had returned from his trip I received neither word nor token. Two more days dragged by, when, just as twilight set in, she came. It had been a week since I had seen her, but it might have been a year from the change I observed in her countenance and expression. I could scarcely greet her with any show of pleasure, she was so unlike her former self.
“You are disappointed, are you not?” said she, looking at me. “You expected revelations, whispered hopes, and all manner of sweet confidences; and you see, instead, a cold, bitter woman, who for the first time in your presence feels inclined to be reserved and uncommunicative.”
“That is because you have had more to trouble than encourage you in your love,” I returned, though not without a certain shrinking, caused more by her manner than words.
She did not reply to this, but rose and paced the floor, coldly at first, but afterwards with a certain degree of excitement that proved to be the prelude to a change in her manner; for, suddenly pausing, she turned to me and said: “Mr. Clavering has left R——, Mrs. Belden.”
“Left!”
“Yes, my uncle commanded me to dismiss him, and I obeyed.”
The work dropped from my hands, in my heartfelt disappointment. “Ah! then he knows of your engagement to Mr. Clavering?”
“Yes; he had not been in the house five minutes before Eleanore told him.”
“Then she knew?”
“Yes,” with a half sigh. “She could hardly help it. I was foolish enough to give her the cue in my first moment of joy and weakness. I did not think of the consequences; but I might have known. She is so conscientious.”
“I do not call it conscientiousness to tell another’s secrets,” I returned.
“That is because you are not Eleanore.”
Not having a reply for this, I said, “And so your uncle did not regard your engagement with favor?”
“Favor! Did I not tell you he would never allow me to marry an Englishman? He said he would sooner see me buried.”
“And you yielded? Made no struggle? Let the hard, cruel man have his way?”
She was walking off to look again at that picture which had attracted her attention the time before, but at this word gave me one little sidelong look that was inexpressibly suggestive.
“I obeyed him when he commanded, if that is what you mean.”
“And dismissed Mr. Clavering after having given him your word of honor to be his wife?”
“Why not, when I found I could not keep my word.”
“Then you have decided not to marry him?”
She did not reply at once, but lifted her face mechanically to the picture.
“My uncle would tell you that I had decided to be governed wholly by his wishes!” she responded at last with what I felt was self-scornful bitterness.
Greatly disappointed, I burst into tears. “Oh, Mary!” I cried, “Oh, Mary!” and instantly blushed, startled that I had called her by her first name.
But she did not appear to notice.
“Have you any complaint to make?” she asked. “Is it not my manifest duty to be governed by my uncle’s wishes? Has he not brought me up from childhood? lavished every luxury upon me? made me all I am, even to the love of riches which he has instilled into my soul with every gift he has thrown into my lap, every word he has dropped into my ear, since I was old enough to know what riches meant? Is it for me now to turn my back upon fostering care so wise, beneficent, and free, just because a man whom I have known some two weeks chances to offer me in exchange what he pleases to call his love?”
“But,” I feebly essayed, convinced perhaps by the tone of sarcasm in which this was uttered that she was not far from my way of thinking after all, “if in two weeks you have learned to love this man more than everything else, even the riches which make your uncle’s favor a thing of such moment—”