as the first. “But what you say about Bertha is quite true, though I do not like to admit it even to myself. Charles, it is a dreadful thing to say of one’s own sister—”
“Don’t say it, dear. I will say it for you. Bertha does not care for Robert Urquhart any more than I care for—for that girl who just brought the plate.”
“Do not go so far as that, dear. Honour, and respect, and regard him she must—how can she help it? But as for loving him, Charles, I don’t believe that she does.”
“I do not think that she has—shall I say sense enough, to know how worthy he is of her honour and regard.”
“Charles, you never understood Bertha. She is a very clever girl—much cleverer than I am, for instance.”
“My dear child,” he replied, warmly, “if you will raise a comparison, you force me to say what it seems absurd in a middle-aged husband to be saying to his wife at her breakfast-table, namely, that she is not worthy to hold your shawl. But leaving you out of the question, I do not believe in her cleverness, and I utterly disbelieve in her heart.”
“You have said that before, Charles, and I have always assured you that you do not understand her. Perhaps it is because you over-refine, and get too subtle about her character, and perhaps you have heard so much about her from me, and have got prejudiced. You would judge her more fairly if she were more a stranger.”
“We do not see a great deal of her.”
“No, but I have told you so much, such heaps of little things, and you have put them together in your own way, and made up a person out of them, just as baby sticks the puzzle together after his own fashion, and calls it ‘all wite.’”
“Well, if I am no nearer all right than baby, so much the better for Bertha and Robert,” said Hawkesley; “but I am not shaken in my conviction at present. But we agree upon the most important point.”
“I am sorry to say that we do, Charles.”
“I think he loves her.”
“As intensely as ever, Charles, that I am certain of. He is one of those men whose feelings are not easily detected, but I have no more doubt of that proud, cold, stern man’s loving Bertha than I have of—”
“Of this proud, cold, stern man’s loving Beatrice.”
“No,” said Mrs. Hawkesley, earnestly, and with something of a tear rising to her eyes, “I won’t say that, Charles, because that is like taking an oath. That you love me I know, and if I were made to walk through fire, nothing could burn out that belief—that is part of me. But as far as I can be certain of anything else, I am certain of his affection for my sister.”
“And where, dearest, is the intellect you speak of, when the woman is not proud of having inspired affection in such a man as Robert Urquhart?”
“Well, I think she is, at times,” returned his wife, slowly.
“I don’t think much of temporary sanity.”
“And then he is not the man to invite a woman’s affection.”
“I thought that a sort of general invitation was included in a certain Service which you know of. But, to speak gravely, ought she not, as I say, to be so proud of such a husband, that if there be a certain crust or armour that seems to come between her and his heart, she should devote her whole life and love to the breaking through it, and becoming the wife of his trust as well as of his admiration and love?”
“We were brought up very carelessly, dear Charles, and perhaps we derived some odd notions from the books we read, and the people we were obliged to know.”
“I forbid you to place yourself with Bertha, even when you are using a sister’s best efforts to excuse her.”
“Well, I do not, dear Charles; it would be affectation if I did. I have had a great advantage in having married—not very unhappily,” she said, turning an arch and loving look towards him, “and when a woman has learned the lesson of real happiness, she can easily learn any other lesson of good. But Bertha’s marriage, though, as you say, it is a grand one, cannot be called happy. It is of no use—at least, it is of no use for you and me to try and deceive ourselves about it.”
“It ought to be happy, with such a man, so truly devoted to her, and every comfort of life about her.”
“In saying that, dear, you talk like a man, and you think as men insist upon thinking about us, measuring us out our privileges by line and rule—”
“And giving capital measure. Come?”
“Capital. But we are not to be measured and fitted, poor creatures, in that way; and you must not insist on our opening debtor and creditor accounts with you, and being good because we ought to be good. You will often find the books very badly kept; not that we mean to cheat you, on the contrary; we delight to throw everything we have in the world into your hands, in exchange for a kind look, but we cannot be made to pay love merely because we owe it.”
“A most singular and objectionable way of conducting one’s affairs, Beatrice, dear. I could put it a little more severely—”
“But you shall not. You know what I mean. And perhaps it is that very feeling on Bertha’s part that all the world is looking at her, and expecting her to be a model wife in return for the great things that have been done for her, that checks her from being as good as she might be.”
“And you consider it an excuse for not doing one’s duty, that one is expected to do it?”
“Women don’t like to be expected to do anything. But do not suppose—of course you will not—that I am making the least excuse for Bertha. That is only my nonsense, or at least something that may go a little way to explain things, not to apologise for them. I only mean, dear, that if it had been Bertha’s good fortune to have a husband of a gentler nature—”
