Chapter XX - Page 2

can hardly imagine two people like Dorothea and yourself more awkwardly placed than you'll be from the minute she arrives. Remember, you're not Strephon and Chloe in a pastoral; you're two most sophisticated members of a most sophisticated set, who scarcely know how to walk about excepting according to the rules of a code of etiquette. Neither of you was made for escapade, and I'm sure you don't like it any more than she will."

"And so you've come to relieve the situation?"

"Exactly."

"And for anything else?"

"What else should I come for?"

"You might have come for--two or three things."

"One of which would be to interfere with your plans. Well, I haven't. If I had wanted to do that, I could have done it long ago. I'll tell you outright that Mr. Pruyn requested me more than once to put a stop to your acquaintance with Dorothea, and I refused. I refused at first because I didn't think it wise, and afterward because I liked you. I kept on refusing because I came to see in the end that you were born to marry Dorothea, and that no one else would ever suit her. I'm here this evening because I believe that still, and I want you to be happy."

"Did you think your coming would make us happier?"

"In the long run--yes. You may not see it to-night, but you will to-morrow. You can't imagine that I would run the risk of forcing myself upon you unless I was sure there was something I could do."

"Well, what is it?"

"It isn't much, and yet it's a great deal. When you and Dorothea are married I want to go with you. I want to be there. I don't want her to go friendless. When she goes back to town to-morrow, and everything has to be explained, I want her to be able to say that I was beside her. I know that mine is not a name to carry much authority, but I'm a woman--a woman who has head a position of responsibility, almost a mother's place, toward Dorothea herself--and there are moments in life when any kind of woman is better than none at all. You may not see it just now, but--"

"Oh yes, I do," he said, slowly; "only when you've gone in for an unconventional thing you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb."

"I don't agree with you. Nothing more than the unconventional requires a nicely discriminating taste; and it's no use being more violent than you can help. You and Dorothea are making a match that sets the rules of your world at defiance, but you may as well avail yourselves of any little mitigation that comes to hand. Life is going to be hard enough for you as it is--"

"Oh, I don't know about that. They can't do anything to us--"

"Not to you, perhaps, because you're a man. But they can to Dorothea, and they will. This is just one of those queer situations