Doctor Thorne, Anthony Trollope [an ebook reader .TXT] 📗

a conclusion that you are all fools, and that it is hopeless to look out for anyone worth caring for.”

Such advice as this, so kindly given, so wisely meant, so clearly intelligible, he should have taken and understood, young as he was. But even yet he did not do so.

“A fool of myself! Yes; I suppose I must be a fool if I have so much regard for Miss Dunstable as to make it painful for me to know that I am to see her no more: a fool: yes, of course I am a fool⁠—a man is always a fool when he loves.”

Miss Dunstable could not pretend to doubt his meaning any longer; and was determined to stop him, let it cost what it would. She now put out her hand, not over white, and, as Frank soon perceived, gifted with a very fair allowance of strength.

“Now, Mr. Gresham,” said she, “before you go any further you shall listen to me. Will you listen to me for a moment without interrupting me?”

Frank was of course obliged to promise that he would do so.

“You are going⁠—or rather you were going, for I shall stop you⁠—to make a profession of love.”

“A profession!” said Frank making a slight unsuccessful effort to get his hand free.

“Yes; a profession⁠—a false profession, Mr. Gresham⁠—a false profession⁠—a false profession. Look into your heart⁠—into your heart of hearts. I know you at any rate have a heart; look into it closely. Mr. Gresham, you know you do not love me; not as a man should love the woman whom he swears to love.”

Frank was taken aback. So appealed to he found that he could not any longer say that he did love her. He could only look into her face with all his eyes, and sit there listening to her.

“How is it possible that you should love me? I am Heaven knows how many years your senior. I am neither young nor beautiful, nor have I been brought up as she should be whom you in time will really love and make your wife. I have nothing that should make you love me; but⁠—but I am rich.”

“It is not that,” said Frank, stoutly, feeling himself imperatively called upon to utter something in his own defence.

“Ah, Mr. Gresham, I fear it is that. For what other reason can you have laid your plans to talk in this way to such a woman as I am?”

“I have laid no plans,” said Frank, now getting his hand to himself. “At any rate, you wrong me there, Miss Dunstable.”

“I like you so well⁠—nay, love you, if a woman may talk of love in the way of friendship⁠—that if money, money alone would make you happy, you should have it heaped on you. If you want it, Mr. Gresham, you shall have it.”

“I have never thought of your money,” said Frank, surlily.

“But it grieves me,” continued she, “it does grieve me, to think that you, you, you⁠—so young, so gay, so bright⁠—that you should have looked for it in this way. From others I have taken it just as the wind that whistles;” and now two big slow tears escaped from her eyes, and would have rolled down her rosy cheeks were it not that she brushed them off with the back of her hand.

“You have utterly mistaken me, Miss Dunstable,” said Frank.

“If I have, I will humbly beg your pardon,” said she. “But⁠—but⁠—but⁠—”

“You have; indeed you have.”

“How can I have mistaken you? Were you not about to say that you loved me; to talk absolute nonsense; to make me an offer? If you were not, if I have mistaken you indeed, I will beg your pardon.”

Frank had nothing further to say in his own defence. He had not wanted Miss Dunstable’s money⁠—that was true; but he could not deny that he had been about to talk that absolute nonsense of which she spoke with so much scorn.

“You would almost make me think that there are none honest in this fashionable world of yours. I well know why Lady de Courcy has had me here: how could I help knowing it? She has been so foolish in her plans that ten times a day she has told her own secret. But I have said to myself twenty times, that if she were crafty, you were honest.”

“And am I dishonest?”

“I have laughed in my sleeve to see how she played her game, and to hear others around playing theirs; all of them thinking that they could get the money of the poor fool who had come at their beck and call; but I was able to laugh at them as long as I thought that I had one true friend to laugh with me. But one cannot laugh with all the world against one.”

“I am not against you, Miss Dunstable.”

“Sell yourself for money! why, if I were a man I would not sell one jot of liberty for mountains of gold. What! tie myself in the heyday of my youth to a person I could never love, for a price! perjure myself, destroy myself⁠—and not only myself, but her also, in order that I might live idly! Oh, heavens! Mr. Gresham! can it be that the words of such a woman as your aunt have sunk so deeply in your heart; have blackened you so foully as to make you think of such vile folly as this? Have you forgotten your soul, your spirit, your man’s energy, the treasure of your heart? And you, so young! For shame, Mr. Gresham! for shame⁠—for shame.”

Frank found the task before him by no means an easy one. He had to make Miss Dunstable understand that he had never had the slightest idea of marrying her, and that he had made love to her merely with the object of keeping his hand in for the work as it were; with that object, and the other equally laudable one of interfering with his cousin George.

And yet there was nothing for him but to get through