"Certainly not that," said Nora.

"Shall I be a load round his neck? Miss Rowley, for my own sake I would not endure such a position as that, not even though I love him.

But for his sake! Think of that. If I find that people think ill of him,--because of me--!"

"No one will think ill of him."

"Is it esteemed needful that such a one as he should marry a woman of his own rank? I can bear to end it all now; but I shall not be able to bear his humiliation, and my own despair, if I find that I have injured him. Tell me plainly,--is it a marriage that he should not make?" Nora paused for a while before she answered, and as she sat silent the other girl watched her face carefully. Nora on being thus consulted, was very careful that her tongue should utter nothing that was not her true opinion as best she knew how to express it. Her sympathy would have prompted her to give such an answer as would at once have made Caroline happy in her mind. She would have been delighted to have been able to declare that these doubts were utterly groundless, and this hesitation needless. But she conceived that she owed it as a duty from one woman to another to speak the truth as she conceived it on so momentous an occasion, and she was not sure but that Mr. Glasc.o.c.k would be considered by his friends in England to be doing badly in marrying an American girl. What she did not remember was this,--that her very hesitation was in fact an answer, and such an answer as she was most unwilling to give. "I see that it would be so," said Caroline Spalding.

"No;--not that."

"What then? Will they despise him,--and me?"

"No one who knows you can despise you. No one who sees you can fail to admire you." Nora, as she said this, thought of her mother, but told herself at once that in this matter her mother's judgment had been altogether destroyed by her disappointment. "What I think will take place will be this. His family, when first they hear of it, will be sorry."

"Then," said Caroline, "I will put an end to it."

"You can't do that, dear. You are engaged, and you haven't a right.

I am engaged to a man, and all my friends object to it. But I shan't put an end to it. I don't think I have a right. I shall not do it any way, however."

"But if it were for his good?"

"It couldn't be for his good. He and I have got to go along together somehow."

"You wouldn't hurt him," said Caroline.

"I won't if I can help it, but he has got to take me along with him any how; and Mr. Glasc.o.c.k has got to take you. If I were you, I shouldn't ask any more questions."

"It isn't the same. You said that you were to be poor, but he is very rich. And I am beginning to understand that these t.i.tles of yours are something like kings' crowns. The man who has to wear them can't do just as he pleases with them. n.o.blesse oblige. I can see the meaning of that, even when the obligation itself is trumpery in its nature.

If it is a man's duty to marry a Talbot because he's a Howard, I suppose he ought to do his duty." After a pause she went on again. "I do believe that I have made a mistake. It seemed to be absurd at the first to think of it, but I do believe it now. Even what you say to me makes me think it."

"At any rate you can't go back," said Nora enthusiastically.

"I will try."

"Go to himself and ask him. You must leave him to decide it at last.

I don't see how a girl when she is engaged, is to throw a man over unless he consents. Of course you can throw yourself into the Arno."

"And get the water into my shoes,--for it wouldn't do much more at present."

"And you can--jilt him," said Nora.

"It would not be jilting him."

"He must decide that. If he so regards it, it will be so. I advise you to think no more about it; but if you speak to anybody it should be to him." This was at last the result of Nora's wisdom, and then the two girls descended together to the room in which Lady Rowley was sitting with her other daughters. Lady Rowley was very careful in asking after Miss Spalding's sister, and Miss Spalding a.s.sured her that Olivia was quite well. Then Lady Rowley made some inquiry about Olivia and Mr. Glasc.o.c.k, and Miss Spalding a.s.sured her that no two persons were ever such allies, and that she believed that they were together at this moment investigating some old church. Lady Rowley simpered, and declared that nothing could be more proper, and expressed a hope that Olivia would like England. Caroline Spalding, having still in her mind the trouble that had brought her to Nora, had not much to say about this. "If she goes again to England I am sure she will like it," replied Miss Spalding.

"But of course she is going," said Lady Rowley.

"Of course she will some day, and of course she'll like it," said Miss Spalding. "We both of us have been there already."

"But I mean Monkhams," said Lady Rowley, still simpering.

"I declare I believe mamma thinks that your sister is to be married to Mr. Glasc.o.c.k!" said Lucy.

"And so she is;--isn't she?" said Lady Rowley.

"Oh, mamma!" said Nora, jumping up. "It is Caroline;--this one, this one, this one,"--and Nora took her friend by the arm as she spoke,--"it is this one that is to be Mrs. Glasc.o.c.k."

"It is a most natural mistake to make," said Caroline.

Lady Rowley became very red in the face, and was unhappy. "I declare," she said, "that they told me it was your elder sister."

"But I have no elder sister," said Caroline, laughing.

"Of course she is oldest," said Nora,--"and looks to be so, ever so much. Don't you, Miss Spalding?"

"I have always supposed so."

"I don't understand it at all," said Lady Rowley, who had no image before her mind's eye but that of Wallachia Petrie, and who was beginning to feel that she had disgraced her own judgment by the criticisms she had expressed everywhere as to Mr. Glasc.o.c.k's bride.

"I don't understand it at all. Do you mean that both your sisters are younger than you, Miss Spalding?"

"I have only got one, Lady Rowley."

"Mamma, you are thinking of Miss Petrie," said Nora, clapping both her hands together.

"I mean the lady that wears the black bugles."

"Of course you do;--Miss Petrie. Mamma has all along thought that Mr.

Glasc.o.c.k was going to carry away with him the republican Browning!"

"Oh, mamma, how can you have made such a blunder!" said Sophie Rowley. "Mamma does make such delicious blunders."

"Sophie, my dear, that is not a proper way of speaking."

"But, dear mamma, don't you?"

"If somebody has told me wrong, that has not been my fault," said Lady Rowley.

The poor woman was so evidently disconcerted that Caroline Spalding was quite unhappy. "My dear Lady Rowley, there has been no fault. And why shouldn't it have been so? Wallachia is so clever, that it is the most natural thing in the world to have thought."

"I cannot say that I agree with you there," said Lady Rowley, somewhat recovering herself.

"You must know the whole truth now," said Nora, turning to her friend, "and you must not be angry with us if we laugh a little at your poetess. Mamma has been frantic with Mr. Glasc.o.c.k because he has been going to marry,--whom shall I say,--her edition of you. She has sworn that he must be insane. When we have sworn how beautiful you were, and how nice, and how jolly, and all the rest of it,--she has sworn that you were at least a hundred, and that you had a red nose.

You must admit that Miss Petrie has a red nose."

"Is that a sin?"

"Not at all in the woman who has it; but in the man who is going to marry it,--yes. Can't you see how we have all been at cross-purposes, and what mamma has been thinking and saying of poor Mr. Glasc.o.c.k?

You mustn't repeat it, of course; but we have had such a battle here about it. We thought that mamma had lost her eyes and her ears and her knowledge of things in general. And now it has all come out! You won't be angry?"