"It ought to be clear," he said doggedly.

"Do you think I don't know that? Do you think that if I liked you well last night I don't like you better now?"

"But do you--like me?"

"That is just the thing I am going to say nothing about."

"Isabel!"

"Just the one thing I will not allude to. Now you must listen to me."

"Certainly."

"I know a great deal about you. We Americans are an inquiring people, and I have found out pretty much everything." His mind misgave him as he felt she had ascertained his former purpose respecting Mabel.

"You," she said, "among young men in England are about the foremost, and therefore,--as I think,--about the foremost in the world. And you have all personal gifts;--youth and spirits-- Well, I will not go on and name the others. You are, no doubt, supposed to be ent.i.tled to the best and sweetest of G.o.d's feminine creatures."

"You are she."

"Whether you be ent.i.tled to me or not I cannot yet say. Now I will tell you something of myself. My father's father came to New York as a labourer from Holland, and worked upon the quays in that city. Then he built houses, and became rich, and was almost a miser;--with the good sense, however, to educate his only son. What my father is you see. To me he is sterling gold, but he is not like your people. My dear mother is not at all like your ladies. She is not a lady in your sense,--though with her unselfish devotion to others she is something infinitely better. For myself I am,--well, meaning to speak honestly, I will call myself pretty and smart. I think I know how to be true."

"I am sure you do."

"But what right have you to suppose I shall know how to be a d.u.c.h.ess?"

"I am sure you will."

"Now listen to me. Go to your friends and ask them. Ask that Lady Mabel;--ask your father;--ask that Lady Cantrip. And above all, ask yourself. And allow me to require you to take three months to do this. Do not come to see me for three months."

"And then?"

"What may happen then I cannot tell, for I want three months also to think of it myself. Till then, good-bye." She gave him her hand and left it in his for a few seconds. He tried to draw her to him; but she resisted him, still smiling. Then she left him.

CHAPTER XLI

Ischl

It was a custom with Mrs. Finn almost every autumn to go off to Vienna, where she possessed considerable property, and there to inspect the circ.u.mstances of her estate. Sometimes her husband would accompany her, and he did so in this year of which we are now speaking. One morning in September they were together at an hotel at Ischl, whither they had come from Vienna, when as they went through the hall into the courtyard, they came, in the very doorway, upon the Duke of Omnium and his daughter. The Duke and Lady Mary had just arrived, having pa.s.sed through the mountains from the salt-mine district, and were about to take up their residence in the hotel for a few days. They had travelled very slowly, for Lady Mary had been ill, and the Duke had expressed his determination to see a doctor at Ischl.

There is no greater mistake than in supposing that only the young blush. But the blushes of middle life are luckily not seen through the tan which has come from the sun and the gas and the work and the wiles of the world. Both the Duke and Phineas blushed; and though their blushes were hidden, that peculiar glance of the eye which always accompanies a blush was visible enough from one to the other.

The elder lady kept her countenance admirably, and the younger one had no occasion for blushing. She at once ran forward and kissed her friend. The Duke stood with his hat off waiting to give his hand to the lady, and then took that of his late colleague. "How odd that we should meet here," he said, turning to Mrs. Finn.

"Odd enough to us that your Grace should be here," she said, "because we had heard nothing of your intended coming."

"It is so nice to find you," said Lady Mary. "We are this moment come. Don't say that you are this moment going."

"At this moment we are only going as far as Halstadt."

"And are coming back to dinner? Of course they will dine with us.

Will they not, papa?" The Duke said that he hoped they would. To declare that you are engaged at an hotel, unless there be some real engagement, is almost an impossibility. There was no escape, and before they were allowed to get into their carriage they had promised they would dine with the Duke and his daughter.

"I don't know that it is especially a bore," Mrs. Finn said to her husband in the carriage. "You may be quite sure that of whatever trouble there may be in it, he has much more than his share."

"His share should be the whole," said her husband. "No one else has done anything wrong."

When the Duke's apology had reached her, so that there was no longer any ground for absolute hostility, then she had told the whole story to her husband. He at first was very indignant. What right had the Duke to expect that any ordinary friend should act duenna over his daughter in accordance with his caprices? This was said and much more of the kind. But any humour towards quarrelling which Phineas Finn might have felt for a day or two was quieted by his wife's prudence.

"A man," she said, "can do no more than apologise. After that there is no room for reproach."

At dinner the conversation turned at first on British politics, in which Mrs. Finn was quite able to take her part. Phineas was decidedly of opinion that Sir Timothy Beeswax and Lord Drummond could not live another Session. And on this subject a good deal was said.

Later in the evening the Duke found himself sitting with Mrs. Finn in the broad verandah over the hotel garden, while Lady Mary was playing to Phineas within. "How do you think she is looking?" asked the father.

"Of course I see that she has been ill. She tells me that she was far from well at Salzburg."

"Yes;--indeed for three or four days she frightened me much. She suffered terribly from headaches."

"Nervous headaches?"

"So they said there. I feel quite angry with myself because I did not bring a doctor with us. The trouble and ceremony of such an accompaniment is no doubt disagreeable."

"And I suppose seemed when you started to be unnecessary?"

"Quite unnecessary."

"Does she complain again now?"

"She did to-day--a little."

The next day Lady Mary could not leave her bed; and the Duke in his sorrow was obliged to apply to Mrs. Finn. After what had pa.s.sed on the previous day Mrs. Finn of course called, and was shown at once up to her young friend's room. There she found the girl in great pain, lying with her two thin hands up to her head, and hardly able to utter more than a word. Shortly after that Mrs. Finn was alone with the Duke, and then there took place a conversation between them which the lady thought to be very remarkable.

"Had I better send for a doctor from England?" he asked. In answer to this Mrs. Finn expressed her opinion that such a measure was hardly necessary, that the gentleman from the town who had been called in seemed to know what he was about, and that the illness, lamentable as it was, did not seem to be in any way dangerous. "One cannot tell what it comes from," said the Duke dubiously.

"Young people, I fancy, are often subject to such maladies."

"It must come from something wrong."

"That may be said of all sickness."

"And therefore one tries to find out the cause. She says that she is unhappy." These last words he spoke slowly and in a low voice. To this Mrs. Finn could make no reply. She did not doubt but that the girl was unhappy, and she knew well why; but the source of Lady Mary's misery was one to which she could not very well allude. "You know all the misery about that young man."

"That is a trouble that requires time to cure it," she said,--not meaning to imply that time would cure it by enabling the girl to forget her lover; but because in truth she had not known what else to say.

"If time will cure it."

"Time, they say, cures all sorrows."