“Stop! Wait,” said Marian, very pale. “I must tell you that secret myself.”
“Hush. Do not be so moved. Remember that your confession is to be whispered to me alone.”
“Dont talk like that. It is all a mistake. My secret has nothing to do with you.” Douglas drew back a little way.
“I am engaged to be married.”
“What do you mean?” he said sternly, advancing a step and looking down menacingly at her with his hand on the back of his chair.
“I have said what I mean,” replied Marian with dignity. But she rose quickly as soon as she had spoken, and got past him into the drawingroom. He followed her; and she turned and faced him in the middle of the room, paler than before.
“You are engaged to me,” he said.
“I am not,” she replied.
“That is a lie!” he exclaimed, struggling in his rage to break through the strong habit of selfcontrol. “It is a damnable lie; but it is the most cruel way of getting rid of me, and therefore the one most congenial to your heartlessness.”
“Sholto,” said Marian, her cheeks beginning to redden: “you should not speak to me like that.”
“I say,” he cried fiercely, “that it is a lie!”
“Whats the matter?” said Elinor, coming hastily into the room.
“Sholto has lost his temper,” said Marian, firmly, her indignation getting the better of her fear now that she was no longer alone with him.
“It is a lie,” repeated Douglas, unable to shape a new sentence. Elinor and Marian looked at one another in perplexity. Then Mr. Lind entered.
“Gently, pray,” said he. “You can be heard all through the house.
Marian: what is the matter?”
She did not answer; but Douglas succeeded, after a few efforts, in speaking intelligibly. “Your daughter,” he said, “with the assistance of her friend Mrs. Leith Fairfax, and a sufficient degree of direct assurance on her own part, has achieved the triumph of bringing me to her feet a second time, after I had unfortunately wounded her vanity by breaking her chains for two years.”
“That is utterly false,” interrupted Marian, with excitement.
“I say,” said Douglas, in a deeper tone and with a more determined manner, “that she set Mrs. Leith Fairfax on me with a tale of love and regret for my absence. She herself with her own lips deliberately invited me to seek your consent to our union. She caused you to write me the invitation I received from you this morning. She told me that my return realized a dream that had been haunting her for two years. She begged me to forgive her the past, and to write her a sonnet, of which she said she was at least more worthy than Clytemnestra, and of which I say she is at best less worthy than Cressida.” He took a paper from his pocket as he spoke; and, with a theatrical gesture, tore it into fragments.
“This is very extraordinary,” said Mr. Lind irresolutely. “Is it some foolish quarrel, or what is the matter? Pray let us have no more unpleasantness.”
“You need fear none from me,” said Douglas. “I do not propose to continue my acquaintance with Miss Lind.”
“Mr. Douglas has proposed to marry me; and I have refused him,” said Marian. “He has lost his temper and insulted me. I think you ought to tell him to go away.”
“Gently, Marian, gently. What am I to believe about this?”
“What I have told you,” said Douglas, “I confirm on my honor, which you can weigh against the pretences of a twice perjured woman.”
“Sholto!”
“I have to speak plainly on my own behalf, Mr. Lind. I regret that you were not in a position this morning to warn me of your daughter’s notable secret.”
“If it is a secret, and you are a gentleman, you will hold your tongue,” interposed Elinor, sharply.
“Papa,” said Marian: “I became engaged yesterday to Mr. Conolly. I told Mr. Douglas this in order to save him from making me a proposal. That is the reason he has forgotten himself. I had not intended to tell you so suddenly; but this misunderstanding has forced me to.”
“Engaged to Mr. Conolly!” cried Mr. Lind. “I begin to fear that —— Enga — —” He took breath, and continued, to Marian: “I forbid you to entertain any such engagement. Sholto: there is evidently nothing to be gained by discussing this matter in hot blood. It is some girlish absurdity — some — some — some—”
“I apologize for having doubted the truth of the excuse,” said Douglas; “but I see that I have failed to gauge Miss Lind’s peculiar taste. I beg you to understand, Mr. Lind, that my pretensions are at an end. I do not aspire to the position of Mr. Conolly’s rival.”
“You are already in the position of Mr. Conolly’s unsuccessful rival; and you fill it with a very bad grace,” said Elinor.
“Pray be silent, Elinor,” said Mr. Lind. “This matter does not concern you. Marian: go to your room for the present. I shall speak to you afterwards.”
Marian flushed, and repressed a sob. “I wish I were under his protection now,” she said, looking reproachfully at Douglas as she crossed the room.
“What can you expect from a father but hostility?” said Elinor, bitterly. “You are a coward, like all your sex,” she added, turning to Douglas. Then she suddenly opened the door, and passed out through it with Marian, whilst the housemaids fled upstairs, the footman shrank into a corner of the landing, and the page hastily dragged the cook down to the kitchen.
The two men, left together in the drawingroom, were for some moments quite at a loss. Then Mr. Lind, after a preliminary cough or two, said: “Sholto: I cannot describe to you how shocked I am by what I have just heard. I am deeply disappointed in Marian. I trusted her implicitly; but of course I now see that I have been wrong in allowing her so much liberty. Evidently a great deal has been going on of which I had not any suspicion.”
Douglas said nothing. His resentment was unabated; but his rage, naturally peevish and thin in quality, was subsiding, though it surged back on him at intervals. But now that he no longer desired to speak passionately, he would not trust himself to speak at all. Suddenly Mr. Lind broke out with a fury that astonished him, preoccupied as he was.
“This — this fellow must have had opportunities of thrusting himself into her society of which I knew nothing. I thought she barely knew him. And if I had known, could I have suspected her of intriguing with an ill-bred adventurer! Yes, I might: my experience ought to have warned me that the taint was in her blood. Her mother did the same thing — left the position I had given her to run away with a charlatan, disgracing me without the shadow of an excuse or reason except her own innate love for what was low. I thought Marian had escaped that. I was proud of her — placed un — unbounded confidence in her.”
“She has struck me a blow,” said Douglas, “the infernal treachery —— .” He checked himself, and after a moment resumed in his ordinary formal manner. “I must leave you, Mr. Lind. I am quite unable at present to discuss what has passed. Any conventional expressions of regret would be —— Goodnight.”
He bowed and left the room. Mr. Lind, taken aback, did not attempt to detain him or even return his bow, but stood biting his lips with a frown of discomfiture and menace. When he was alone, he paced the room several times. Then he procured some writing materials and sat down before them. He