"I'm afraid he is cross, and wouldn't let me have my own way."

"I can only think of one other;--but you would not take him."

"Then you had better not mention him. It is no good crowding the list with impossibles."

"I was thinking of--myself."

"You are certainly one of the impossibles."

"Why, Lady Mab?"

"For twenty reasons. You are too young, and you are bound to oblige your father, and you are to be wedded to Parliament,--at any rate for the next ten years. And altogether it wouldn't do,--for a great many reasons."

"I suppose you don't like me well enough?"

"What a question to ask! No; my Lord, I do not. There; that's what you may call an answer. Don't you pretend to look offended, because if you do, I shall laugh at you. If you may have your joke surely I may have mine."

"I don't see any joke in it."

"But I do. Suppose I were to say the other thing. Oh, Lord Silverbridge, you do me so much honour! And now I come to think about it, there is no one in the world I am so fond of as you. Would that suit you?"

"Exactly."

"But it wouldn't suit me. There's papa. Don't run away."

"It's ever so much past five," said the legislator, "and I had intended to be in the House more than an hour ago. Good-bye. Give my love to Miss Ca.s.sewary."

"Certainly. Miss Ca.s.sewary is your most devoted friend. Won't you bring your sister to see me some day?"

"When she is in town I will."

"I should so like to know her. Good-bye."

As he hurried down to the House in a hansom he thought over it all, and told himself that he feared it would not do. She might perhaps accept him, but if so, she would do it simply in order that she might become d.u.c.h.ess of Omnium. She might, he thought, have accepted him then, had she chosen. He had spoken plainly enough. But she had laughed at him. He felt that if she loved him, there ought to have been something of that feminine tremor, of that doubting, hesitating half-avowal of which he had perhaps read in novels, and which his own instincts taught him to desire. But there had been no tremor nor hesitating. "No; my Lord, I do not," she had said when he asked her to her face whether she liked him well enough to be his wife. "No; my Lord, I do not." It was not the refusal conveyed in these words which annoyed him. He did believe that if he were to press his suit with the usual forms she would accept him. But it was that there should be such a total absence of trepidation in her words and manner. Before her he blushed and hesitated and felt that he did not know how to express himself. If she would only have done the same, then there would have been an equality. Then he could have seized her in his arms and sworn that never, never, never would he care for any one but her.

In truth he saw everything as it was only too truly. Though she might choose to marry him if he pressed his request, she would never subject herself to him as he would have the girl do whom he loved.

She was his superior, and in every word uttered between them showed that it was so. But yet how beautiful she was;--how much more beautiful than any other thing he had ever seen!

He sat on one of the high seats behind Sir Timothy Beeswax and Sir Orlando Drought, listening, or pretending to listen, to the speeches of three or four gentlemen respecting sugar, thinking of all this till half-past seven;--and then he went to dine with the proud consciousness of having done his duty. The forms and methods of the House were, he flattered himself, soaking into him gradually,--as his father had desired. The theory of legislation was sinking into his mind. The welfare of the nation depended chiefly on sugar. But he thought that, after all, his own welfare must depend on the possession of Mab Grex.

CHAPTER XX

"Then He Will Come Again"

Lady Mabel, when her young lover left her, was for a time freed from the necessity of thinking about him by her father. He had returned from the Oaks in a very bad humour. Lord Grex had been very badly treated by his son, whom he hated worse than any one else in the world. On the Derby Day he had won a large sum of money, which had been to him at the time a matter of intense delight,--for he was in great want of money. But on this day he had discovered that his son and heir had lost more than he had won, and an arrangement had been suggested to him that his winnings should go to pay Percival's losings. This was a mode of settling affairs to which the Earl would not listen for a moment, had he possessed the power of putting a veto upon it. But there had been a transaction lately between him and his son with reference to the cutting off a certain entail under which money was to be paid to Lord Percival. This money had not yet been forthcoming, and therefore the Earl was constrained to a.s.sent. This was very distasteful to the Earl, and he came home therefore in a bad humour, and said a great many disagreeable things to his daughter.

"You know, papa, if I could do anything I would." This she said in answer to a threat, which he had made often before and now repeated, of getting rid altogether of the house in Belgrave Square. Whenever he made this threat he did not scruple to tell her that the house had to be kept up solely for her welfare. "I don't see why the deuce you don't get married. You'll have to do it sooner or later." That was not a pleasant speech for a daughter to hear from her father. "As to that," she said, "it must come or not as chance will have it. If you want me to sign anything I will sign it;"--for she had been asked to sign papers, or in other words to surrender rights;--"but for that other matter it must be left to myself." Then he had been very disagreeable indeed.

They dined out together,--of course with all the luxury that wealth can give. There was a well-appointed carriage to take them backwards and forwards to the next square, such as an Earl should have. She was splendidly dressed, as became an Earl's daughter, and he was brilliant with some star which had been accorded to him by his sovereign's grateful minister in return for staunch parliamentary support. No one looking at them could have imagined that such a father could have told such a daughter that she must marry herself out of the way because as an unmarried girl she was a burden.

During the dinner she was very gay. To be gay was the habit,--we may almost say the work,--of her life. It so chanced that she sat between Sir Timothy Beeswax, who in these days was a very great man indeed, and that very Dolly Longstaff, whom Silverbridge in his irony had proposed to her as a fitting suitor for her hand.

"Isn't Lord Silverbridge a cousin of yours?" asked Sir Timothy.

"A very distant one."

"He has come over to us, you know. It is such a triumph."

"I was so sorry to hear it." This, however, as the reader knows, was a fib.

"Sorry!" said Sir Timothy. "Surely Lord Grex's daughter must be a Conservative."

"Oh yes;--I am a Conservative because I was born one. I think that people in politics should remain as they are born,--unless they are very wise indeed. When men come to be statesmen and all that kind of thing, of course they can change backwards and forwards."

"I hope that is not intended for me, Lady Mabel."

"Certainly not. I don't know enough about it to be personal." That, however, was again not quite true. "But I have the greatest possible respect for the Duke, and I think it a pity that he should be made unhappy by his son. Don't you like the Duke?"

"Well;--yes;--in a way. He is a most respectable man; and has been a good public servant."

"All our lot are ruined, you know," said Dolly, talking of the races.

"Who are your lot, Mr. Longstaff?"

"I'm one myself."

"I suppose so."

"I'm utterly smashed. Then there's Percival."

"I hope he has not lost much. Of course you know he's my brother."

"Oh laws;--so he is. I always put my foot in it. Well;--he has lost a lot. And so have Silverbridge and Tifto. Perhaps you don't know Tifto."

"I have not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Tifto."

"He is a major. I think you'd like Major Tifto. He's a sort of racing coach to Silverbridge. You ought to know Tifto. And Tregear is pretty nearly cleared out."

"Mr. Tregear! Frank Tregear!"

"I'm told he has been hit very heavy. I hope he's not a friend of yours, Lady Mabel."

"Indeed he is;--a very dear friend and a cousin."

"That's what I hear. He's very much with Silverbridge you know."