第153章

'You are very kind, Trichy,' said Mary; but she spoke in a tone very different from that she would have used eighteen months ago.

'Why, what is the matter, Mary? Shan't you be glad to come and see us?'

'I do not know, dearest; that must depend on circumstances. To see you, you yourself, your own dear, sweet, loving face must always be pleasant to me.'

'And shan't you be glad to see him?'

'Yes, certainly, if he loves you.'

'Of course he loves me.'

'All that alone would be pleasant enough, Trichy. But what if there should be circumstances which should still make us enemies; should make your friends and my friends--friend, I should say, for I have only one--should make them opposed to each other?'

'Circumstances! What circumstances?'

'You are going to be married, Trichy, to the man you love; are you not?'

'Indeed I am!'

'And it is not pleasant? is it not a happy feeling?'

'Pleasant! happy! yes, very pleasant; very happy. But, Mary, I am not at all in such a hurry as he is,' said Beatrice, naturally thinking of her own little affairs.

'And, suppose I should wish to be married to the man that I love?' Mary said this slowly and gravely, and as she spoke she looked her friend full in the face.

Beatrice was somewhat astonished, and for the moment hardly understood.

'I am sure I hope you will some day.'

'No, Trichy; no, you hope the other way. I love your brother; I love Frank Gresham; I love him quite as well, quite as warmly, as you love Caleb Oriel.'

'Do you?' said Beatrice, staring with all her eyes, and giving one long sigh, as this new subject for sorrow was so distinctly put before her.

'It that so odd?' said Mary. 'You love Mr Oriel, though you have been intimate with him hardly more than two years. Is it so odd that I should love your brother, whom I have known almost all my life?'

'But, Mary, I thought it was always understood between us that--that--I mean that you were not to care about him; not in the way of loving him, you know--I thought you always said so--I have always told mamma so as if it came from yourself.'

'Beatrice, do not tell anything to Lady Arabella as though it came from me; I do not want anything to be told to her, either of me or from me.

Say what you like to me yourself; whatever you say will not anger me.

Indeed, I know what you would say--and yet I love you. Oh, I love you, Trichy--Trichy, I do love you so much! Don't turn away from me!'

There was such a mixture in Mary's manner of tenderness and almost ferocity, that poor Beatrice could hardly follow her. 'Turn away from you, Mary! no never; but this does make me unhappy.'

'It is better that you should know it all, and then you will not be led into fighting my battles again. You cannot fight them so that I should win; I do love your brother; love him truly, fondly, tenderly. I would wish to have him for my husband as you wish to have Mr Oriel.'

'But, Mary, you cannot marry him!'

'Why not?' said she, in a loud voice. 'Why can I not marry him? If the priest says a blessing over us, shall we not be married as well as you and your husband?'

'But you know he cannot marry unless his wife shall have money.'

'Money--money; and he is to sell himself for money? Oh, Trichy! do not you talk about money. It is horrible. But, Trichy, I will grant it--I cannot marry him; but still, I love him. He has a name, a place in the world, and fortune, family, high blood, position, everything. He has all this, and I have nothing. Of course I cannot marry him. But yet I do love him.'

'Are you engaged to him, Mary?'

'He is not engaged to me; but I am to him.'

'Oh, Mary, that is impossible!'

'It is not impossible: it is the cast--I am pledged to him; but he is not pledged to me.'

'But, Mary, don't look at me in that way. I do not quite understand you. What is the good of your being engaged if you cannot marry him?'

'Good! there is no good. But can I help it, if I love him? Can I make myself not love him by just wishing it? Oh, I would do it if I could.

But now you will understand why I shake my head when you talk of coming to your house. Your ways and my ways must be different.'

Beatrice was startled, and, for a time, silenced. What Mary said of the difference of their ways was quite true. Beatrice had dearly loved her friend, and had thought of her with affection through all this long period in which they had been separated; but she had given her love and her thoughts on the understanding, as it were, that they were in unison as to the impropriety of Frank's conduct.

She had always spoken, with a grave face, of Frank and his love as of a great misfortune, even to Mary herself; and her pity for Mary had been founded on the conviction of her innocence. Now all those ideas had to be altered. Mary owned her fault, confessed herself to be guilty of all that Lady Arabella so frequently laid to her charge, and confessed herself anxious to commit every crime as to which Beatrice had been ever so ready to defend her.

Had Beatrice up to this dreamed that Mary was in love with Frank, she would doubtless have sympathized with her more or less sooner or later.

As it was, is was beyond all doubt that she would soon sympathize with her. But, at the moment, the suddenness of the declaration seemed to harden her heart, and she forgot, as it were, to speak tenderly to her friend.

She was silent, therefore, and dismayed; and looked as though she thought that her ways and Mary's ways must be different.

Mary saw all that was passing in the other's mind: no, not all; all the hostility, the disappointment, the disapproval, the unhappiness, she did see; but not the under-current of love, which was strong enough to well up and drown all these, if only time could be allowed for it to do so.

'I am so glad to have told you,' said Mary, curbing herself, 'for deceit and hypocrisy are detestable.'

'It was a misunderstanding, not deceit,' said Beatrice.

'Well, now we understand each other; now you know that I have a heart within me, which like those of some others has not always been under my own control. Lady Arabella believes that I am intriguing to be the mistress of Greshamsbury. You, at any rate, will not think that of me.