第82章

I believe I had a moment of eloquence. I don't know what I said, nor how I said it, to what point it would bear examination, nor how, if you had been there, it would seem to you, as a disinterested critic, to hang together; but I know that after a while there were tears in my own eyes. I begged him not to give up Blanche; I assured him that she is not so foolish as she seems; that she is a very delicate little creature to handle, and that, in reality, whatever she does, she is thinking only of him.

He had been all goodness and kindness to her, I knew that; but he had not, from the first, been able to conceal from her that he regarded her chiefly as a pretty kitten.

She wished to be more than that, and she took refuge in flirting, simply to excite his jealousy and make him feel strongly about her.

He has felt strongly, and he was feeling strongly now; he was feeling passionately--that was my whole contention.

But he had perhaps never made it plain to those rather near-sighted little mental eyes of hers, and he had let her suppose something that could n't fail to rankle in her mind and torment it.

'You have let her suppose,' I said, 'that you were thinking of me, and the poor girl has been jealous of me. I know it, but from nothing she herself has said. She has said nothing; she has been too proud and too considerate. If you don't think that 's to her honor, I do. She has had a chance every day for a week, but she has treated me without a grain of spite.

I have appreciated it, I have understood it, and it has touched me very much. It ought to touch you, Mr. Wright. When she heard I was engaged to Mr. Longueville, it gave her an immense relief.

And yet, at the same moment you were protesting, and denouncing, and saying those horrible things about her! I know how she appears--she likes admiration. But the admiration in the world which she would most delight in just now would be yours. She plays with Captain Lovelock as a child does with a wooden harlequin, she pulls a string and he throws up his arms and legs.

She has about as much intention of eloping with him as a little girl might have of eloping with a pasteboard Jim Crow.

If you were to have a frank explanation with her, Blanche would very soon throw Jim Crow out of the window.

I very humbly entreat you to cease thinking of me.

I don't know what wrong you have ever done me, or what kindness I have ever done you, that you should feel obliged to trouble your head about me. You see all I am--I tell you now.

I am nothing in the least remarkable. As for your thinking ill of me at Baden, I never knew it nor cared about it.

If it had been so, you see how I should have got over it.

Dear Mr. Wright, we might be such good friends, if you would only believe me. She 's so pretty, so charming, so universally admired. You said just now you had bored me, but it 's nothing--in spite of all the compliments you have paid me--to the way I have bored you. If she could only know it--that I have bored you! Let her see for half an hour that I am out of your mind--the rest will take care of itself.

She might so easily have made a quarrel with me. The way she has behaved to me is one of the prettiest things I have ever seen, and you shall see the way I shall always behave to her!

Don't think it necessary to say out of politeness that I have not bored you; it is not in the least necessary.

You know perfectly well that you are disappointed in the charm of my society. And I have done my best, too.

I can honestly affirm that!' For some time he said nothing, and then he remarked that I was very clever, but he did n't see a word of sense in what I said. 'It only proves,'

I said, 'that the merit of my conversation is smaller than you had taken it into your head to fancy. But I have done you good, all the same. Don't contradict me; you don't know yet; and it 's too late for us to argue about it. You will tell me to-morrow.'"