"If you had seen more of the world, Lucilla," he said, "you would know
that a true love like yours is a mystery to a woman like Madame
Pratolungo. She doesn't believe in it--she doesn't understand it. She
knows herself to be capable of breaking any engagement, if the
circumstances encouraged her--and she estimates your fidelity by her
knowledge of her own nature. There is nothing in her experience of you,
or in her knowledge of my brother's disfigurement, to discourage such a
woman from scheming to part us. She has seen for herself--what you have
already told me--that you have got over your first aversion to him. She
knows that women as charming as you are, have over and over again married
men far more personally repulsive than my brother. Lucilla! something
which is not to be out-argued, and not to be contradicted, tells me that
her return to England will be fatal to my hopes, if that return finds you
and me with no closer tie between us than the tie that binds us now. Are
these fanciful apprehensions, unworthy of a man? My darling! worthy or
not worthy, you ought to make allowances for them. They are apprehensions
inspired by my love for You!"
Under those circumstances, I could make every allowance for him--and I
said so. He moved nearer to me; and put his arm round me.
"Are we not engaged to each other to be man and wife?" he whispered.
"Yes."
"Are we not both of age, and both free to do as we like?"
"Yes."
"Would you relieve me from the anxieties under which I am suffering, if
you could?"
"You know I would!"
"You _can_ relieve me."
"How?"
"By giving me a husband's claim to you, Lucilla--by consenting to marry
me in London, in a fortnight's time."
I started back, and looked at him in amazement. For the moment, I was
incapable of answering in any other way than that.
"I ask you to do nothing unworthy of you," he said. "I have spoken to a
relative of mine living near London--a married lady--whose house is open
to you in the interval before our wedding day. When your visit has been
prolonged over a fortnight only, we can be married. Write home by all
means to prevent them from feeling anxious about you. Tell them that you
are safe and happy, and under responsible and respectable care--but say
no more. As long as it is possible for Madame Pratolungo to make mischief
between us, conceal the place in which you are living. The instant we are
married reveal everything. Let all your friends--let all the world know
that we are man and wife!"
His arm trembled round me; his face flushed deep; his eyes devoured me.
Some women, in my place, might have been offended; others might have been
flattered. As for me--I can trust the secret to these pages--I was
frightened.
"Is it an elopement that you are proposing to me?" I asked.
"An elopement!" he repeated. "Between two engaged people who have only
themselves to think of."
"I have my father to think of; and my aunt to think of," I said. "You are
proposing to me to run away from them, and to keep in hiding from them!"
"I am asking you to pay a fortnight's visit at the house of a married
lady--and to keep the knowledge of that visit from the ears of the worst
enemy you have, until you have become my wife," he answered. "Is there
anything so very terrible in my request that you should turn pale at it,
and look at me in that frightened way? Have I not courted you with your
father's consent? Am I not your promised husband? Are we not free to
decide for ourselves? There is literally no reason--if it could be
done--why we should not be married to-morrow. And you still hesitate?
Lucilla! Lucilla! you force me to own the doubt that has made me
miserable ever since I have been here. Are you indeed as changed towards
me as you seem? Do you really no longer love me as you once loved me in
the days that are gone?"
He rose, and walked away a few paces, leaning over the parapet with his
face in his hands.
I sat alone, not knowing what to say or do. The uneasy sense in me that
he had reason to complain of my treating him coldly, was not to be
dismissed from my mind by any effort that I could make. He had no right
to expect me to take the step which he had proposed--there were
objections to it which any woman would have felt in my place. Still,
though I was satisfied of this, there was an obstinate something in me
which would take his part. It could not have been my conscience surely
which said to me--'There was a time when his entreaties would have
prevailed on you; there was a time when you would not have hesitated as
you are hesitating now?'
Whatever the influence was, it moved me to rise from my seat, and to join
him at the parapet.
"You cannot expect me to decide on such a serious matter as this at
once," I said. "Will you give me a little time to think?"
"You are your own mistress," he rejoined bitterly. "Why ask me to give you
time? You can take any time you please--you can do as you like."
"Give me till the end of the week," I went on. "Let me be sure that my
father persists in not answering either your letter or mine. Though I
_am_ my own mistress, nothing but his silence can justify me in going
away secretly, and being married to you by a stranger. Don't press me,
Oscar! It isn't very long to the end of the week."
Something seemed to startle him--something in my voice perhaps which told
him that I was really distressed. He looked round at me quickly, and
caught me with the tears in my eyes.
"Don't cry, for God's sake!" he said. "It shall be as you wish. Take your
time. We will say no more about it till the end of the week."
He kissed me in a hurried startled way, and gave me his arm to walk back.
"Grosse is coming to-day," he continued. "He mustn't see you looking as
you are looking now. You must rest and compose yourself. Come home."
I went back with him, feeling--oh, so sad and sore at heart! My last
faint hope of a renewal of my once-pleasant intimacy with Madame
Pratolungo was at an end. She stood revealed to me now as a woman whom I
ought never to have known--a woman with whom I could never again exchange
a friendly word. I had lost the companion with whom I had once been so
happy; and I had pained and disappointed Oscar. My life has never looked
so wretched and so worthless to me as it looked to-day on the pier at
Ramsgate.
He left me at the door, with a gentle encouraging pressure of my hand.
"I will call again later," he said; "and hear what Grosse's report of you
is, before he goes back to London. Rest, Lucilla--rest and compose
yourself."
A heavy footstep sounded suddenly behind us as he spoke. We both turned
round. Time had slipped by more rapidly than we had thought. There stood
Herr Grosse, just arrived on foot from the railway station.
His first look at me seemed to startle and disappoint him. His eyes
stared into mine through his spectacles with an expression of surprise
and anxiety which I had never seen in them before. Then he turned his
head and looked at Oscar with a sudden change--a change, unpleasantly
suggestive (to my fancy) of anger or distrust. Not a word fell from his
lips. Oscar was left to break the awkward silence. He spoke to Grosse.
"I won't disturb you and your patient now," he said. "I will come back in
an hour's time."
"No! you will come in along with me, if you please. I have something, my
young gentlemans, that I may want to say to you." He spoke with a frown
on his bushy eyebrows, and pointed in a very peremptory manner to the
house-door.
Oscar rang the bell. At the same moment my aunt, hearing us outside,
appeared on the balcony above the door.
"Good morning, Mr. Grosse," she said. "I hope you find Lucilla looking
her best. Only yesterday, I expressed my opinion that she was quite well
again."
Grosse took off his hat sulkily to my aunt, and looked back again at
me--looked so hard and so long, that he began to confuse me.
"Your aunt's opinions is not my opinions," he growled, close at my ear.
"I don't like the looks of you, Miss. Go in!"
The servant was waiting for us at the open door. I went an without making
any answer. Grosse waited to see Oscar enter the house before him.
Oscar's face darkened as he joined me in the hall. He looked half angry,
half confused. Grosse pushed himself roughly between us, and gave me his
arm. I went up-stairs with him, wondering what it all meant.