Bettina was in London. The ocean voyage had done her good, and the
necessary effect of change, variety, new faces, new feelings, new
thoughts, had been to take her out of herself--the self that was
nothing but a grieving and bereaved daughter--and to quicken the
pleasure-loving instincts and thirst for admiration which were as
inherently, though not as prominently, a part of her. There was still
a root of bitterness springing up within her whenever she thought of
her mother's being taken from her, and this very element it was which
urged her to make all she could of life, in the hope of partially
filling the void in her heart. She was not even yet reconciled to the
loss of her mother, and there was a certain defiance of destiny in
her resolution to get some compensation for the wrong she had
sustained in losing what was dearest to her.
On arriving in London, Bettina went to a hotel, and from there made
inquiries as to the whereabouts of Lord Hurdly. Parliament was in
session, and his lordship was in his town house in Grosvenor Square.
Having ascertained the hour at which he was most likely to be at
home, Bettina betook herself at that hour to his house.
She refused to give her name to the servant who answered her ring,
and asked merely that Lord Hurdly might be told that a lady wished to
speak to him on a matter of importance. The servant, after a moment's
hesitation, ushered her into a small reception-room on the first
floor, and requested her to wait there.
She stood for a few moments alone in this room, her heart beating
fast. She wore the American style of deep mourning, which swathed her
in dense, impenetrable black from head to feet, and seemed to add to
her somewhat unusual tallness.
The door opened. Lord Hurdly entered. She had seen photographs of
him, and even through that thick veil would have known him anywhere.
The tall, thin figure, sharp eyes, aquiline nose, clean-shaven face,
and scrupulous dress were all familiar to both memory and
imagination.
He paused on the threshold of the room, as if slightly repelled by
the strange appearance of the shrouded figure before him. Then he
spoke, coldly and concisely.
"You wished to speak to me?" he said. "I have a few moments only at
my disposal."
Bettina raised one hand and threw back her veil, revealing thus not
only her face, but her whole figure clothed in smooth, tight-fitting
black, so plain and devoid of trimming that the exquisite lines were
shown to the best advantage. Her face, surrounded by black draperies,
looked as purely tinted as a flower, and the excitement of the moment
had made her eyes brilliant and flushed her cheeks.
The imperturbability of Lord Hurdly's face relaxed. His lips parted;
a smothered sound, as of surprise, escaped him. Certainly at that
moment Bettina was nothing less than bewilderingly beautiful.
"I have to beg your pardon for coming to you so unceremoniously," she
said. "My excuse is that I have a matter of great importance to speak
to you of."
Her voice was certainly a charming one, and if her accent was such as
he might have found fault with under other circumstances, under these
he found it an added attraction. She had put her own construction on
Lord Hurdly's evident surprise at sight of her, and it was one which
gave her an increased self-possession and added to her sense of
power.
"Let us go into another room," said Lord Hurdly. "I cannot keep you
here, and whatever you may have to say to me I am quite at leisure to
attend to."
He led the way from the room, and Bettina followed in silence. She
had had innumerable dreams of grandeur, poor child! but she had been
too ignorant even to imagine such a place as this house. Its
furnishing and decorations represented not only the accumulated
wealth, but also the accumulated taste and opportunity, of many
successive generations. She felt an ineffable emotion of deep,
sensuous enjoyment in her present surroundings which made her heart
leap at the idea that all these things might some day be hers. Lord
Hurdly looked exceedingly well preserved, and that day might be very
far distant. All the more reason, therefore, she told herself, why
she should make peace between him and Horace, so that she might at
least be sometimes a guest in this house, and be lifted into an
atmosphere where she felt for the first time that she was in her true
element. It was not only the magnificence which she saw on every side
which so appealed to her. It was that air of the best in everything
that made her feel, in Lord Hurdly's presence, as well as in his
house, that civilization could not go further--that life, on its
material side, had nothing more to offer. And Bettina had now reached
a point in her experience where material pleasure seemed to be all
that was left. She quite believed that all of the joy of loving was
buried in the grave of her mother.
Her heart was beating fast as she entered Lord Hurdly's library and
saw him close the door behind them. It then struck her as being a
little peculiar that he should have brought her here without even
knowing who she was or what she wanted of him.
A doubt, a scarcely possible suspicion, came into her mind.
"Have you any idea who I am?" she said.
"It suffices me to know what you are."
"Ah! I do not understand," she said, puzzled.
"You have come upon me without ceremony, madam," said Lord Hurdly,
with a slightly old-fashioned pomposity in his polished manner, "and
I may therefore ask you to excuse an absence of ceremony in me in
alluding to the impression which you have made upon me. You are a
stranger to me--an American, I judge from your speech. I hope that I
am to be so fortunate as to hear that there is something which I can
do for you."
"There is," Bettina said--"a thing so vital and important to me that,
now I am in your presence, I am afraid to venture to speak, for fear
you may refuse to hear my prayer."
"You are in small danger from that quarter, I assure you. I am ready
to do for you whatever you may ask. Let me, however, put a few
questions before I hear your request. You are wearing mourning. Is
it, perhaps, for your husband?"
"For my mother," said Bettina, with a sudden trembling of the lip and
suffusion of the eyes which gave her a new charm, in revealing the
fact that this young goddess had a human heart which could be quickly
stirred to emotion.
"Forgive me," said Lord Hurdly, with great courtesy. "Forget that I
have roughly touched a spot so sore, and tell me this, if you will:
are you married or unmarried?"
"I am unmarried," said Bettina, beginning to tremble as she found the
important moment upon her; "but I am about to be married. I have made
this visit to London beforehand only to see you. The man I am going
to marry is your cousin and heir, Horace Spotswood."
Lord Hurdly's guarded face betrayed a certain agitation, but the
signs of this were quickly controlled.
He looked straight into her eyes for a few seconds without speaking.
Then he crossed the room and touched an electric button, saying, as
he did so:
"I will get rid of an engagement that I had, so that I may be quite
at leisure to talk with you."
Neither spoke again until the servant had come, taken his
instructions, and gone away, closing the door behind him. There was a
certain determination in Lord Hurdly's manner and expression which
did not escape Bettina. She was sure that her revelation of her
identity had prompted some decisive course of action in his mind, but
what it was she could not guess from that inscrutable face.
"I am now quite free for the morning," her companion said. "Naturally
there is much for us to say to each other. Will you not lay aside
your bonnet and wrap? The day is warm, and that heavy mourning must
distress you."
Certainly his manner was kind. Bettina began to like him and to hope
for success in her object in coming here. Quickly unbuttoning her
black gloves, she unsheathed her lovely hands, which were bare of
rings. Then with a few deft motions she removed her outer wrap and
her bonnet with its long, thick veil.
In so doing she revealed the fact that she had an exquisite head,
with delicious masses of brown hair which looked almost reddish in
its contrast to the dense black of her gown, the smooth severity of
which accentuated every lovely curve of her figure, as it would have
done every defect, had there been defect. This gown was fitted to her
so absolutely that one had the satisfying sense that one looked at
the woman instead of at her clothes. There were fine old portraits on
the wall, of noble ladies who had once done the honors of this great
establishment, but the fairest of them paled before the glowing
loveliness of this girl. For she looked a girl, despite her sombre
garments, and there was a certain timidity in her manner which
strengthened this impression.
Lord Hurdly offered her a seat, and then took another, facing her.
"In engaging yourself to marry Horace Spotswood," he began,
deliberately, "you have made the supreme, if not the irreparable,
mistake of your life."
Bettina's white skin showed the sudden ebb of the blood in her veins
as he said these words.
"Why?" she asked, concisely.
"Because he is no match for you, and because your marrying him would
not only place you on a lower plane than where you belong, but it
would also so seriously injure his position in life that there would
be no possible chance for him to retrieve it until my death. I am
comparatively a young man, and likely to live a long time. Apart from
that, I may marry. I had no expectation or intention of doing so, but
his recent defiance of me has made me sometimes feel inclined to the
idea. I have so far changed in my feeling on this subject that if I
could meet and win a woman to my mind, I would marry at once. What
then would become of Horace? He has a mere pittance besides his pay,
which is a ridiculous sum for a man to marry on. He has wronged you
in putting you in such a position, and you have equally wronged him."
Bettina had turned very white as he spoke. The picture he drew was
bad enough in itself, but to have it sketched before her in her
present surroundings made it infinitely worse.
"If we have wronged each other, we have done it ignorantly," she
said. "He assured me that you were determined never to marry, and he
counted on your past kindness and your attachment to him--"
She broke off, her voice shaken.
"On the same ground I counted on him," said Lord Hurdly. "He was in
no position to marry against my will, and in engaging to do so he
defied me. Let him take the consequences."
"Then you are determined not to relent?" Bettina faltered. "You will
not forgive him for the offence of proposing to make me his wife?"
"I did not say that," returned Lord Hurdly, with a subtle change of
tone. "I certainly should not forgive him for marrying you, but for
proposing to do so I am ready enough to forgive him, provided he
comes to his senses at that point and goes no further. In that event
I am ready not only to continue the handsome income that I have
allowed him, but to give him outright the principal of it."
Bettina had never pretended that she was deeply in love with Horace
Spotswood. Indeed, she had quite decided within herself that she was
incapable of such a state of feeling, and it was her belief that the
fervor and intensity of love which she had given to her mother had
taken the place of what some women give to their husbands. Still, she
looked upon her prospective marriage to him as one of the fixed facts
of the universe, and Lord Hurdly's words bewildered her.
Keener than this surprise, however, was her sense of humiliation at
the implacable offence which Lord Hurdly had taken at his heir's
proposed marriage with herself. That he had wished Horace to marry
she knew; it was therefore the woman whom he had chosen that Lord
Hurdly resented.
She rose to her feet, feeling herself giddy, and knowing that she was
white with agitation. Her one idea was to get away--to escape the
scrutiny of the intense gaze which was fixed upon her.
"I must go. I beg your pardon for coming," she said, with a proud
coldness, reaching for her wrap.
"You must not go. I owe you endless thanks for coming, and I will
show you that you have to congratulate yourself also on this
interview. If you went now, you would defeat all the good that may
come of it. Sit down, I beg of you, and hear me out."
His manner was not only urgent, it was also kind, and nothing could
have been more respectful than his every look and tone.
Bettina sat down again and waited.
"What is it that has shocked you?" he said. "Is it because of your
great love for Horace--or is it his for you which you are thinking of
most?"
"I do not see that I am bound to answer you that question," said
Bettina, proudly. "My reasons are sufficient for myself."
"You are in no way bound, my dear young lady, but you would be wise
to answer me. I have every disposition to act as your friend in this
matter, and you would be making a mistake to turn away from me
without hearing what I have to say. If you are imagining that the
young fellow with whom you have an engagement of marriage would be
rendered inconsolable by the loss of you, when it would be made up to
him by the possession of a fortune, perhaps you overestimate things."
"What things?" she said, still cold and withheld in her manner, her
pale face very set.
"The unselfishness of man's love in general, and of this man's in
particular," he said; "and, for another thing, yourself. It seems a
brutal thing to say, but if you believe that that hotheaded,
undisciplined boy is capable of a sustained affection against such
odds of fortune as this case presents, then I disagree with you, and
I know him better than you do."
Bettina's face flushed.
"He does love me--he does!" she cried, in some agitation. "I have
been cold and careless toward him, and have told him that my heart
was buried in my mother's grave." At these words her voice trembled.
"He knows how hard it is for me to think of another kind of love just
yet; but he has been kindness itself, and has written me the dearest,
lovingest letters that ever a woman had. If they have been a little
rarer and colder lately, it is only because of my own shortcomings
toward him. I shall try to atone for them now. Since I realize how
great an injury I have done to him, I shall try to be his
compensation for it."
"And you think you will succeed? I doubt it."
Something in his manner impressed her in spite of herself. Perhaps he
saw that it was so, for he pushed his advantage.
"Compare the length and opportunities of my intercourse with him and
yours," he said. "You would be acting the part of absolute folly not
to listen to me now. In the end you will be as free to act as you
were in the beginning. Only let me remind you that his future is
involved as well as your own."
He saw that this argument told.
"I am willing to listen," she said.
"I am grateful to you," he answered, with that air of finished
politeness which makes the best graces of a young man seem crude, and
which Bettina was not too ignorant to appreciate at its proper value.
"I have known Horace as child and boy and man--if he may yet be
called a man," he said, with a light touch of scorn. "You have known
him in one capacity and state only--that of a lover, a _rôle_ he can
no doubt play very prettily, and one in which, despite his youth, he
is far from being unpractised. He has been in love oftener than it
behooves me to say or you to hear--quite harmless affairs, of course,
but they prove to one who has watched him as I have that his nature
is fickle and capricious. I confess that when I heard you say, just
now, that his letters of late had been rarer and less ardent, I could
not wholly attribute it to the reason which so quickly satisfied you.
As a rule, these intensely ardent feelings are not of long duration,
and I know well both the intensity and the brevity of Horace's
attacks of love. It was for this very reason that I so resented the
idea of his marrying without my advice. I foresaw that he would soon
weary of any woman. All the more reason, therefore, for his choosing
one who was suited to him, apart from the matter of his loving her. I
knew he had not the staying quality--that he was quite incapable of a
sustained affection. I therefore considered his taste in the matter
less than my own. As he was my heir in the event of my not marrying,
I felt that I had the right to demand that he should marry suitably
to his position."
"I regret that he should have made an engagement which has
disappointed you," said Bettina, a slight curl at the corners of her
lips.
"I regret it also; but you may remember that at the beginning of this
interview I spoke of this mistake on your part and on his as great,
though not perhaps irreparable."
He was looking at her keenly, and he saw that his words had no effect
upon her except to mystify her.
"I do not see any way to its reparation," she said, and was about to
continue, when he interrupted her.
"I have pointed out the way--a rupture of the engagement by mutual
consent."
"A consent that he would never give," said Bettina, with a certain
pride of confidence.
"And you?" he asked.
"Nor I either," she said, "unless I were convinced that he wished
it."
"It would perhaps be not impossible to convince you of that, granted
a little time," said Lord Hurdly. "But, apart from his wish, have you
no consideration for his interest? His position in diplomacy is at
present insignificant, but he has talents and a chance to rise,
unless that chance be utterly frustrated by his embarrassing himself
with a family--a condition that would be death to his career. Ask any
one you choose, and they will tell you that there cannot be two
opinions about this. Besides, through my help he has been able to
live like a man of fortune. His allowance, however, will be stopped
on the day of his marriage, if he persists in such a course. If he
abandons it, he will find himself with the principal as well as the
interest at his disposal. So situated, he has every chance to rise.
Under the other conditions, he inevitably falls. What would become of
him ultimately is too dreary a line of conjecture to dwell upon."
Bettina's face was paler still. The tears sprang to her eyes--tears
of mortification and keen regret. The thought of her mother pierced
through her, and the consciousness that she had no longer the refuge
of that gentle heart to cast herself upon almost overcame her. Pride
lent her aid, however, and she rallied quickly.
"You have fully demonstrated to me," she said, "that I have injured
your cousin in promising to marry him. I did it in ignorance,
however. With the facts before me which you have just given, I should
perhaps have acted differently. Regret now, however, is useless."
"On the contrary, this is one of the rare cases in which regret is
not useless. The reparation of your mistake is in your own hands."
The possibility of doing what he urged flashed through Bettina's
mind. Horace would certainly be infinitely better off without her, in
every rational and material sense; and at this stage of Bettina's
development the rational and material were predominant. But what of
her, apart from Horace? This thought found vent in words.
"You have been looking at this subject from your own point of view,"
she said, "and perhaps naturally. I must, however, think of an aspect
of the case in which you have no interest. I am absolutely alone in
the world, and if, for your cousin's sake, I made this sacrifice--"
In spite of herself her voice faltered.
Lord Hurdly drew his chair a little nearer to her. His eyes were
fixed upon her with a yet more intent gaze as he said, with
directness and decision:
"You are quite mistaken. It is this aspect of the case which concerns
me chiefly. If, as is undoubtedly true, the prevention of this most
mistaken marriage would be an advantage to Horace, to you it may be a
far greater gain, and to me it may be the fulfilment of all that I
have ever desired in life."
"What do you mean?" she said, bewildered.
"I mean that the supreme desire of my heart is, and has been from the
moment my eyes rested on you, to make you Lady Hurdly absolutely and
at once, instead of your waiting for a name and position which, after
all, may never come to you."
Her heart beat so that her breathing came in smothered gasps. The
piercing demand of his eyes was almost terrifying to her. She saw
that he was absolutely in earnest, and the commiseration which she
felt for Horace struggled with the dazzling temptation which this
opportunity offered to that strong ambition which was so great an
element in her essential nature.
"Do not be shocked or startled by the suddenness of my proposal," he
said. "I trust that you will come to see that it is eminently wise
and reasonable. When I said the marriage was an unsuitable one, I was
thinking more of you than of Horace. Your beauty, your manner, your
voice, your words, your whole ego and personality, show you to have
been born for a great position. It is a case of manifest destiny. The
fortune and the social rank that I can bestow are all too little for
you; I should like to be able to put a queen's crown on your
beautiful head. But such as I am--a man who has made his impression
on the current history of his country, and who, though no longer
young in the crude sense that counts only by months and years, is
still by no means old--and such things as I have and can command, I
lay at your feet, begging you humbly to impart to them a value which
they have never had before, by accepting them and becoming the sharer
of my name, my position, and my fortune, and the mistress of my
heart."
He had risen and was standing in front of her with the resolution of
a strong purpose in his eyes. But she could not meet them, those
dominating, searching eyes. The thoughts that his words had given
rise to were too agitating, too uncertain, too tormenting to her. The
thought of giving Horace up pained her more than she would have
believed, while the vision of the grandeur so urged upon her, which
not ten minutes gone she had seen dashed like a full beaker from her
thirsty lips, tormented her as well. It was to her a vast sacrifice
to think of resigning such possibilities, yet at the first she had no
other thought but to resign them. The arguments for Horace's future
career which had been urged upon her also played their part in her
consciousness now, and the seething confusion of images in her brain
made her senses swim.
Lord Hurdly must have seen her agitation, for he hastened to say:
"I have been too hasty. You must forgive me. Do not try to answer me
at present. I see that you are overwrought. Let me beseech you to
rest a little while. I will send for the housekeeper."
"No, no! I must go," she answered, starting to her feet. But she had
overestimated her strength. She sank back in her chair.
He went himself and brought her a glass of wine, talking to her with
a soothing reassurance as she drank it. He reproached himself for
having been too hurried, too rash, but pleaded the earnestness of his
hopes as an excuse. When she had taken the wine she wanted to go, but
he entreated her so humbly not to punish him too deeply for his fault
that when he begged her to let him call the housekeeper to sit with
her until luncheon, which he implored her to take before leaving, she
acquiesced, too fagged out mentally to take any decided position of
her own.
To the housekeeper Lord Hurdly explained that this lady was in deep
trouble--a fact sufficiently attested by her heavy mourning--and
would like to rest awhile before eating some luncheon. Bettina saw
herself regarded with a respectful awe which she had never had a
taste of before. The housekeeper, with the sweetest of voices and
kindest of manners, promised to do all in her power, and Lord Hurdly
withdrew.
[Illustration: "SHE SANK BACK IN HER CHAIR"]
Bettina could not talk. She lay back on the lounge and submitted to
be gently fanned and having salts occasionally held to her nose. But
all her effort was to compose her thoughts--a difficult attempt, as
the image of her mother was the one which insisted on taking the
pre-eminence in her mind. She ordered it down, with a sort of
bitterness. Had her mother been alive, she would have gladly fled
from this puzzle into which her life had tangled itself, and gone
back to America to rest and mother-love. So she told herself, at
least. But then followed the reflection that in her mother's death
the refuge of love's calm and protection was gone from her forever,
and that she must either remain in Europe under one or the other of
the two conditions offered her, or else resign herself to the apathy
of despair.
It was not in her to do this, and the brilliant possibilities which
Lord Hurdly had suggested flashed into her mind, and so excited her
that she suddenly rose to her feet and announced that her slight
indisposition was past, asking the housekeeper to take her somewhere
to rearrange her hair and prepare herself for luncheon.
Even had Bettina been the possessor of a happy heart which rejoiced
in a fulfilled and contented love for the man she had promised to
marry, the other, dominating side of her nature could not have been
quite stifled as she walked through the halls and corridors of this
magnificent mansion. These were things her imagination had always
pictured as her proper position in life, and which the unregenerate
heart within her had always craved. But how far beyond her ignorant
dreams was the grand repose of this beautiful house! It was so much
more than she had conceived that the new supply to her senses seemed,
in a way, to create a new demand in them.
Never, perhaps, had she so appreciated what it must be to be a
_grande dame_ as to-day, when she was on the point of refusing such
an opportunity, though it was just within her grasp. For she had no
idea but that she should refuse it, and this very consciousness made
her more friendly in her feelings and actions toward Lord Hurdly than
she would otherwise have been.
When she had adjusted her dress and smoothed her hair, before large
mirrors which gave her a better view of her loveliness than she had
ever had before, a servant summoned her to luncheon, and at the foot
of the stairs she saw Lord Hurdly awaiting her.
So seen, a decided baldness, which she had not much noticed before,
became evident, but there was a certain distinction in the man's
general air which this rather seemed to heighten. His manner of
delicate solicitude for her was the perfection of good-breeding, and
when she answered him reassuringly, and walked by his side to the
dining-room, a sudden conviction seized her that she had come into
her own--that this was the position for which she had been born, and
that, independent of the fact that she had determined to decline it,
it was her fate, which she could not escape. She tried to coax the
belief that it was as Horace's wife that she would one day enjoy all
these delights, but the thought eluded her. She could not see Horace
in the seat now filled by his cousin. In imagination as well as in
reality it was Lord Hurdly who occupied that seat.
This conviction, which every moment deepened, she could not shake off
and could not account for. She had a feeling that it was forced upon
her consciousness through some dominating power of Lord Hurdly's
spirit over her own. She felt as if she were hypnotized. She wondered
if it could be so, and if she would presently come to herself and
find that it was all a delusion and she had never seen Lord Hurdly or
his house, but was on her way to St. Petersburg to join Horace and
settle down to a limited and economical way of living.
At this thought her heart fell. She had laid her hand upon this
dazzling prize of worldly wealth and position. Could she let it go?
During luncheon no reference was made to the subject of their late
conversation. The servants remained in the room, and Lord Hurdly
talked of public and quite impersonal affairs. In so doing he showed
a trenchant insight, a broad knowledge of the world, an undeniably
powerful mentality, and a decided skill in the art of pleasing. If
the tone of his talk was cynical, it found, for that very reason, all
the clearer echo in Bettina's heart. A certain tendency to cynicism
was inborn in her, and the bitterness she felt at the loss of her
mother had accentuated this. What was the use of loving, she asked
herself, when love must end like this? In her heart she passionately
hoped that she might never love again. And she had also a shrinking
from being loved in any ardent manner that might make demands upon
her which she could not respond to.
When the time came for Bettina to leave, she found that the cab in
which she had come had been sent away, and, in its place, Lord
Hurdly's brougham waited for her. He escorted her himself to the
carriage door, and when the great footman who held it open touched
his hat in silence as he took her orders, and then mounted beside his
twin brother on the box and she was bowled away, on padded cushions
from which emanated a delicious odor of fine leather, Bettina felt
that, for the first time in her life, she was in her proper element.
The events of the morning seemed to her like some agitating dream.
She wondered how long it had been since she left her hotel, and tried
to guess what time it was. As she did so, her eyes fell on the small
clock, neatly encased in the leather upholstering of the carriage
just in front of her. The fitness of this object and of everything
about her gave her a delicious sense of adaptation to her environment
which she had never had before.
When she got out at her hotel, the footman, with the same salute of
ineffable respect, said that his lordship had told him to ask if she
had any further orders for the carriage to-day or to-morrow. She
declined the offer, but, none the less, she felt flattered by the
attention.
Lord Hurdly's only further reference to their last conversation had
been to ask her to pay his words the respect of a few days'
consideration at least. He had learned from her that Horace was
unaware of her being in England, and that she had a whole week at her
disposal before he would expect to meet her there. When he asked for
a part of that week, in which to give him the opportunity to prove to
her that her duty to Horace, as well as to herself, demanded the
rupture of this mistaken engagement, she was sufficiently influenced
by the subtlety of this appeal to grant his request.
To her surprise, several days went by, and he did not come to see her
nor write. Every morning the carriage was sent to the hotel and the
footman came to her door for orders, but she always answered that she
did not require it. Every morning, also, came a lavish offering of
flowers, the great exotic flowers which Bettina loved--huge,
heavy-petalled roses and green translucent-looking orchids. But,
except for these, he did not thrust himself upon her notice--a fact
which during the first and second days she gave him the greatest
credit for, but by the third had grown to feel a certain resentment
at.
In the mean time there had followed her from home a letter from
Horace. It was the coldest she had ever had from him, and set her to
thinking deeply as to the possible cause of his coldness. Could it
be, she asked herself, that Lord Hurdly was right in calling him
capricious? Had he--as was possible, of course--cooled in his ardor
for her, and come to see that this hasty engagement of his had been a
great mistake, as she herself had come to see?
For this point, at least, Bettina had positively reached. Why,
therefore, should she adhere to her engagement in the face of the
knowledge that such an adherence would be to his disadvantage, no
less than to hers?
These arguments would have quite prevailed with her but for one
thing. This was the conviction, not yet changed, though somewhat
shaken by Lord Hurdly's account of him, that Horace really loved her
and would suffer in losing her.
Deprived of the restraint of her mother's influence, Bettina had
progressed with rapidity in her way toward worldliness and selfish
ambition, but she had a heart. Her love for her mother had given
abundant proof of that, if there were nothing else; and now her heart
combated the influence of her head, which decreed that only a fool
would reject the great good fortune now held out to her.
In point of fact, Bettina had been influenced more by ambition than
by love in engaging herself to Horace, and the gratification of a far
more splendid ambition was offered to her in making this other
marriage. In it, also, love would play but little part, and this she
felt to be decidedly a gain. Yet she was not so far lost to the
sentiments of kindness and loyalty, that she had learned from the
teaching and example of her mother, as not to hesitate before
wounding and humiliating the man who, as she still believed, loved
her devotedly. Could it have been proved that she was mistaken in so
believing, Lord Hurdly's case would have been already won.