"You said your heart was breaking: who is it for?" asked Sepia, almost imperiously, and raising her voice a little.

"Sepia!" cried Hesper, in bewilderment.

"Why should your heart be breaking, except you loved somebody?"

"Because I hate _him_," answered Hesper.

"Pooh! is that all?" returned Miss Yolland. "If there were anybody you wanted--then I grant!"

"Sepia!" said Hesper, almost entreatingly, "I can not bear to be teased to-day. Do be open with me. You always puzzle me so! I don't understand you a bit better than the first day you came to us. I have got used to you--that is all. Tell me--are you my friend, or are you in league with mamma? I have my doubts. I can't help it, Sepia."

She looked in her face pitifully. Miss Yolland looked at her calmly, as if waiting for her to finish.

"I thought you would--not help me," Hesper went on, "--that no one can except G.o.d--he could strike me dead; but I did think you would feel for me a little. I hate Mr. Redmain, and I loathe myself. If _you_ laugh at me, I shall take poison."

"I wouldn't do that," returned Miss Yolland, quite gravely, and as if she had already contemplated the alternative; "--that is, not so long as there was a turn of the game left."

"The game!" echoed Hesper. "--Playing for love with the devil!--I wish the game were yours, as you call it!"

"Mine I'd make it, if I had it to play," returned Sepia. "I wish I were the other player instead of you, but the man hates me. Some men do.--Come," she went on, "I will be open with you, Hesper; you don't hang for thoughts in England. I will tell you what I would do with a man I hated--that is, if I was compelled to marry him; it would hardly be fair otherwise, and I have a weakness for fair play.--I would give him absolute fair play."

The last three words she spoke with a strange expression of mingled scorn and jest, then paused, and seemed to have said all she meant to say.

"Go on," sighed Hesper; "you amuse me." Her tone expressed anything but amus.e.m.e.nt. "What would a woman of your experience do in my place?"

Sepia fixed a momentary look on Hesper; the words seemed to have stung her. She knew well enough that, if Lady Malice came to know anything of her real history, she would have bare time to pack up her small belongings. She wanted Hesper married, that she might go with her into the world again; at the same time, she feared her marriage with Mr.

Redmain would hardly favor her wishes. But she could not with prudence do anything expressly to prevent it; while she might even please Mr.

Redmain a little, if she were supposed to have used influence on his side. That, however, must not seem to Hesper. Sepia did not yet know in fact upon what ground she had to build.

For some time she had been trying to get nearer to Hesper, but--much like Hesper's experience with her--had found herself strangely baffled, she could not tell how--the barrier being simply the half innocence, half ignorance, of Hesper. When minds are not the same, words do not convey between them.

She gave a ringing laugh, throwing back her head, and showing all her fine teeth.

"You want to know what I would do with a man I hated, as you _say_ you hate Mr. Redmain?--I would send for him at once--not wait for him to come to me--and entreat him, _as he loved me_, to deliver me from the dire necessity of obeying my father. If he were a gentleman, as I hope he may be, he would manage to get me out of it somehow, and wouldn't compromise me a hair's breadth. But, that is, _if I were you_. If I were _myself_ in your circ.u.mstances, and hated him as you do, that would not serve my turn. I would ask him all the same to set me free, but I would behave myself so that he could not do it. While I begged him, I mean, I should make him feel that he could not--should make him absolutely determined to marry me, at any price to him, and at whatever cost to me. He should say to himself that I did not mean what I said--as, indeed, for the sake of my revenge, I should not. For that I would give anything--supposing always, don't you know? that I hated him as you do Mr. Redmain. He should declare to me it was impossible; that he would die rather than give up the most precious desire of his life--and all that rot, you know. I would tell him I hated him--only so that he should not believe me. I would say to him, 'Release me, Mr.

Redmain, or I will make you repent it. I have given you fair warning. I have told you I hated you.' He should persist, should marry me, and then I _would_."

"Would what?"

"Do as I said."

"But what?"

"Make him repent it."

With the words, Miss Yolland broke into a second fit of laughter, and, turning from Hesper, went, with a kind of loitering, strolling pace toward the door, glancing round more than once, each time with a fresh bubble rather than ripple in her laughter. Whether it was all nonsensical merriment, or whether the author of laughter without fun, Beelzebub himself, was at the moment stirring in her, Hesper could not have told; as it was, she sat staring after her, unable even to think.

Just as she reached the door, however, she turned quickly, and, with the smile of a hearty, innocent child, or something very like it, ran back to Hesper, threw her arms round her, and said:

"There, now! I've done for you what I could: I have made you forget the odious man for a moment. I was curious to know whether I could not make a bride forget her bridegroom. The other thing is too easy."

"What other thing?"

"To make a bridegroom forget his bride, of course, you silly child!--But there I am, off again! when really it is time to be serious, and come to the only important point in the matter.--In what shade of purity do you think of ascending the funeral pyre?--In absolute white?--or rose-tinged?--or cream-colored!--or gold-suspect?--Eh, happy bride?"

As she ceased, she turned her head away, pulled out her handkerchief, and whimpered a little.

"Sepia!" said Hesper, annoyed, "you are a worse goose than I thought you! What have _you_ got to cry about? _You_ have not got to marry him!"

"No; I wish I had!" returned Sepia, wiping her eyes. "Then I shouldn't lose you. I should take care of that."

"And am I likely to gain such a friend in Mr. Redmain as to afford the loss of the only _other_ friend I have?" said Hesper, calmly.

"Ah, Hesper! a sad experience has taught me differently, The moment you are married to the man--as married you will be--you all are--bl.u.s.ter as you may--that moment you will begin to change into a wife--a domesticated animal, that is--a tame tabby. Unwilling a woman must be to confess herself only the better half of a low-bred brute, with a high varnish--or not, as the case may be; and there is nothing left her to do but set herself to find out the wretch's virtues, or, as he hasn't got any, to invent for him the least unlikely ones. She wants for her own sake to believe in him, don't you know? Then she begins to repent having said hard words of the poor gentleman. The next thing, of course, will be, that you begin to hate the person, to whom you said them, and to persuade yourself she drew them out of you; and so you break off all communication with the obnoxious person; who being, in the present instance, that black-faced sheep, Sepia Yolland, she is very sorry beforehand, and hates Mr. Redmain with all her heart; first, because Hesper Mortimer hates him, and next, but twice as much, because she is going to love him. It is a great pity _you_ should have him, Hesper. I wish you would hand him over to me. _I_ shouldn't mind what he was. I should soon tame him."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Hesper, with righteous indignation. "_You would not mind what he was!_"

Sepia laughed--this time her curious half-laugh.

"If I did, I wouldn't marry him, Hesper," she said. "Which is worse--not to mind, and marry him; or to mind, and marry him all the same? Eh, Cousin Hesper Mortimer?"

"I _can't_ make you out, Sepia!" said Hesper. "I believe I never shall."

"Very likely. Give it up?"

"Quite."

"The best thing you could do. I can't always make myself out. But, then, I always give it up directly, and so it does me no harm. But it's ten times worse to worry your poor little heart to rags about such a man as that; he's not worth a thought from a grand creature like you.

Where's the use, besides? Would you stand staring at your medicine a whole day before the time for taking it comes? I wouldn't have my right leg cut off because that is the side my dog walks on, and dogs go mad!

Slip, cup, and lip--don't you know? The man may be underground long before the wedding-day: he's anything but sound, they tell me. But it would be far better soon after it, of course. Think only--a young widow, rich, and not a straw the worse!"

"Sepia, I can't for the life of me tell whether you are a Job's comforter or the devil's advocate."

"Not the latter, my child; for I want to see you emerge a saint from the miseries of matrimony. But, whatever you do, Hesper, don't break your heart, for you will find it hard to mend. I broke mine once, and have been mad ever since."

"What is the use of saying that to me, when you know I have to marry the man?"

"I never said you were not to marry him; I said you were not to break your heart. Marriage is nothing so long as you do not make a heart affair of it; that hurts; and, as you are not in love, there is no occasion for it at all."

"Marriage is nothing, Sepia! Is it nothing to be tied to a man--to _any_ man--for all your life?"

"That's as you take it. n.o.body makes so much of it nowadays as they used. The clergy themselves, who are at the bottom of all the business, don't fuss about every trifle in the prayer-book. They sign the articles, and have done with it--meaning, of course, to break them, if they stand in their way."

Hesper rose in anger.

"How dare you--" she began.

"Good gracious!" cried Sepia, "you don't imagine I meant anything so wicked! How could you let such a thing come into your head? I declare you are quite dangerous to talk to!"

"It's such a horrible business," said Hesper, "it seems to make one capable of anything wicked, only to think about it. I would rather not say another word on the subject."