"I'm sure I can't tell," said Lady Staveley, who was not so perfect an actor as her guest.

"I do think gentlemen in the house in the morning always look so unfortunate. You have been endeavouring to make yourself agreeable, but you know you've been yawning."

"Do you suppose then that men never sit still in the morning?" said Augustus.

"Oh, in their chambers, yes; or on the bench, and perhaps also behind counters; but they very seldom do so in a drawing-room. You have been fidgeting about with the poker till you have destroyed the look of the fireplace."

"Well, I'll go and fidget up stairs with Graham," said he; and so he left the room.

"Nasty, sly girl," said Lady Staveley to herself as she took up her work and sat herself down in her own chair.

Augustus did go up to his friend and found him reading letters. There was no one else in the room, and the door when Augustus reached it was properly closed. "I think I shall be off to-morrow, old boy,"

said Felix.

"Then I think you'll do no such thing," said Augustus. "What's in the wind now?"

"The doctor said this morning that I could be moved without danger."

"He said that it might possibly be done in two or three days--that was all. What on earth makes you so impatient? You've nothing to do.

n.o.body else wants to see you; and n.o.body here wants to get rid of you."

"You're wrong in all your three statements."

"The deuce I am! Who wants to get rid of you?"

"That shall come last. I have something to do, and somebody else does want to see me. I've got a letter from Mary here, and another from Mrs. Thomas;" and he held up to view two letters which he had received, and which had, in truth, startled him.

"Mary's duenna;--the artist who is supposed to be moulding the wife."

"Yes; Mary's duenna, or Mary's artist, whichever you please."

"And which of them wants to see you? It's just like a woman, to require a man's attendance exactly when he is unable to move."

Then Felix, though he did not give up the letters to be read, described to a certain extent their contents. "I don't know what on earth has happened," he said. "Mary is praying to be forgiven, and saying that it is not her fault; and Mrs. Thomas is full of apologies, declaring that her conscience forces her to tell everything; and yet, between them both, I do not know what has happened."

"Miss Snow has probably lost the key of the workbox you gave her."

"I have not given her a workbox."

"Then the writing-desk. That's what a man has to endure when he will make himself head schoolmaster to a young lady. And so you're going to look after your charge with your limbs still in bandages?"

"Just so;" and then he took up the two letters and read them again, while Staveley still sat on the foot of the bed. "I wish I knew what to think about it," said Felix.

"About what?" said the other. And then there was another pause, and another reading of a portion of the letters.

"There seems something--something almost frightful to me," said Felix gravely, "in the idea of marrying a girl in a few months' time, who now, at so late a period of our engagement, writes to me in that sort of cold, formal way."

"It's the proper moulded-wife style, you may depend," said Augustus.

"I'll tell you what, Staveley, if you can talk to me seriously for five minutes, I shall be obliged to you. If that is impossible to you, say so, and I will drop the matter."

"Well, go on; I am serious enough in what I intend to express, even though I may not be so in my words."

"I'm beginning to have my doubts about this dear girl."

"I've had my doubts for some time."

"Not, mark you, with regard to myself. The question is not now whether I can love her sufficiently for my own happiness. On that side I have no longer the right to a doubt."

"But you wouldn't marry her if you did not love her."

"We need not discuss that. But what if she does not love me? What if she would think it a release to be freed from this engagement? How am I to find that out?"

Augustus sat for a while silent, for he did feel that the matter was serious. The case as he looked at it stood thus:--His friend Graham had made a very foolish bargain, from which he would probably be glad to escape, though he could not now bring himself to say as much. But this bargain, bad for him, would probably be very good for the young lady. The young lady, having no shilling of her own, and no merits of birth or early breeding to a.s.sist her outlook in the world, might probably regard her ready-made engagement to a clever, kind-hearted, high-spirited man, as an advantage not readily to be abandoned.

Staveley, as a sincere friend, was very anxious that the match should be broken off; but he could not bring himself to tell Graham that he thought that the young lady would so wish. According to his idea the young lady must undergo a certain amount of disappointment, and receive a certain amount of compensation. Graham had been very foolish, and must pay for his folly. But in preparing to do so, it would be better that he should see and acknowledge the whole truth of the matter.

"Are you sure that you have found out your own feelings?" Staveley said at last; and his tone was then serious enough even for his friend.

"It hardly matters whether I have or have not," said Felix.

"It matters above all things;--above all things, because as to them you may come to something like certainty. Of the inside of her heart you cannot know so much. The fact I take it is this--that you would wish to escape from this bondage."

"No; not unless I thought she regarded it as bondage also. It may be that she does. As for myself, I believe that at the present moment such a marriage would be for me the safest step that I could take."

"Safe as against what danger?"

"All dangers. How, if I should learn to love another woman,--some one utterly out of my reach,--while I am still betrothed to her?"

"I rarely flatter you, Graham, and don't mean to do it now; but no girl ought to be out of your reach. You have talent, position, birth, and gifts of nature, which should make you equal to any lady. As for money, the less you have the more you should look to get. But if you would cease to be mad, two years would give you command of an income."

"But I shall never cease to be mad."

"Who is it that cannot be serious, now?"

"Well, I will be serious--serious enough. I can afford to be so, as I have received my medical pa.s.sport for to-morrow. No girl, you say, ought to be out of my reach. If the girl were one Miss Staveley, should she be regarded as out of my reach?"

"A man doesn't talk about his own sister," said Staveley, having got up from the bed and walked to the window, "and I know you don't mean anything."

"But, by heavens! I do mean a great deal."

"What is it you mean, then?"

"I mean this--What would you say if you learned that I was a suitor for her hand?"

Staveley had been right in saying that a man does not talk about his own sister. When he had declared, with so much affectionate admiration for his friend's prowess, that he might aspire to the hand of any lady, that one retiring, modest-browed girl had not been thought of by him. A man in talking to another man about women is always supposed to consider those belonging to himself as exempt from the incidents of the conversation. The dearest friends do not talk to each other about their sisters when they have once left school; and a man in such a position as that now taken by Graham has to make fight for his ground as closely as though there had been no former intimacies. My friend Smith in such a matter as that, though I have been hail fellow with him for the last ten years, has very little advantage over Jones, who was introduced to the house for the first time last week. And therefore Staveley felt himself almost injured when Felix Graham spoke to him about Madeline.

"What would I say? Well--that is a question one does not understand, unless--unless you really meant to state it as a fact that it was your intention to propose to her."

"But I mean rather to state it as a fact that it is not my intention to propose to her."