“I left him asleep in the dining-room. I have just been asking Miss
McQuinch whether she thought you would give me a copy of this carte.”
“That Geneva one. It is most annoying how people persist in admiring it. It always looks to me as if it belonged to an assortment of popular beauties at one shilling each. I dont think I have another. But you may take that if you wish.”
“Thank you,” said Douglas, drawing it from the book.
“I think you have a copy of every photograph I have had taken in my life,” she said, sitting down near him, and taking the album. “I have several of yours, too. You must get one taken soon for me; I have not got you with your beard yet. I have a little album upstairs which Aunt Dora gave me on my eighth birthday; and the first picture in it is you, dressed in flannels, holding a bat, and looking very stern as captain of your eleven at Eton. I used to stand in great awe of you then. Do you remember telling me once that ‘Zanoni’ was a splendid book, and that I ought to read it?”
“Pshaw! No. I must have been a young fool. But it seems that I had the grace even then to desire your sympathy.”
“I assure you I read it most reverently down in Wiltshire, where Nelly kept a select library of fiction concealed underneath her mattress; and I believed every word of it. Nelly and I agreed that you were exactly like Zanoni; but she was hardly to blame; for she had never seen you.”
“Things like that make deep impressions on children,” said Elinor, thoughtfully. “You were a Zanoni in my imagination for years before I saw you. When we first met you treated me insufferably. If you had known how my childish fancy had predisposed me to worship you, you might have vouchsafed me some more consideration, and I might have gone on believing you a demigod to the end of the chapter. I have hardly forgiven you yet for disenchanting me.”
“I am sorry,” said Douglas sarcastically. “I must have been sadly lacking in impressiveness. But on the other hand I recollect that you did not disappoint me in the least. You fully bore out the expectations I had been led to form of you.”
“I have no doubt I did,” said Elinor. “Yet I protest that my reputation was as unjust as yours. However, I have outlived my sensitiveness to this injustice, and have even contracted a bad habit of pretending to act up to it occasionally before foolish people. Marian: are you sure that duet is not on the sofa in my room?”
“Oh, the sofa! I looked only in the green case.”
“I will go and hunt it out myself. Excuse me for a few minutes.”
Douglas was glad to see her go. Yet he was confused when he was alone with Marian. He strolled to the window, outside which the roof of the porch had been converted into a summer retreat by a tent of pink-striped canvass. “The tent is up already,” he said. “I noticed it as we came in.”
“Yes. Would you prefer to sit there? We can carry out this little table, and put the lamp on it. There is just room for three chairs.”
“We need not crowd ourselves with the table,” he said. “There will be light enough. We only want to talk.”
“Very well,” said Marian, rising. “Will you give me that woolen thing that is on the sofa? It will do me for a shawl.” He placed it on her shoulders, and they went out.
“I will sit in this corner,” said Marian. “You are too big for the campstool. You had better bring a chair. I am fond of sitting here. When the crimson shade is on the lamp, and papa asleep in its roseate glow, the view is quite romantic: there is something ecstatically snug in hiding here and watching it.” Douglas smiled, and seated himself as she suggested, near her, with his shoulder against the stone balustrade.
“Marian,” said he, after a pause: “you remember what passed between us at the Academy yesterday?”
“You mean our solemn league and covenant. Yes.”
“Why did we not make that covenant before? Life is not so long, nor happiness so common, that we can afford to trifle away two years of it. I wish you had told me when I last came here of that old photograph of mine in your album.”
“But this is not a new covenant. It is only an old one mended. We were always good friends until you quarrelled and ran away.”
“That was not my fault, Marian.”
“Then it must have been mine. However, it does not matter now.”
“You are right. Prometheus is unbound now; and his despair is only a memory sanctifying his present happiness. You know why I called on your father this morning?”
“It was to see the electro-motor in the city, was it not?”
“Good Heavens, Marian!” he said, rising, “what spirit of woman or spirit of mischief tempts you to coquet with me even now?”
“I really thought that was the reason — besides, of course, your desire to make papa amends for not having been to see him sooner after your return.”
“Marian!” he said, still remonstrantly.
She looked at him with sudden dread, and instinctively recognized the expression in his face.
“You know as well as I,” he continued, “that I went to seek his consent to our solemn league and covenant, as you call it. If that covenant were written on your heart as it is on mine, you would not inflict on me this pretty petty torture. Your father has consented: he is delighted. Now may I make a guess at that happy secret you told me of yesterday, and promised I should know one day?”
“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