Isabel Clarendon, Vol. I (of II)

Vincent owed it to himself to make the most of this present experience. He was not likely again to see such an embodiment of splendid indignation, nor hear a voice so self-governed in rich anger. It was a pity that he had for the moment lost his calmer faculties; it cost him no little effort to speak the first few words of reply.

“I can only ask you to forgive me, Mrs. Clarendon–”

He was interrupted.

“Kindly follow me,” Isabel said. She led the way along the edge of the bushes and out of sight of the house. Then she again faced him.

“It is all grievously irregular,” Lacour pleaded, or rather explained, for the brief walk had helped him to self-command. “I need not say that I was alone in devising the plan. I wanted to speak with Miss Warren, and I knew her habit of sitting alone in the library. The window stood open; I entered.”

“May I ask for what purpose you wished to speak with Miss Warren?”

“I fear, Mrs. Clarendon, I am not at liberty to answer that question.”

“Your behaviour is most extraordinary.”

“I know it; it is wholly irregular. I owe you an apology for so entering your house.”

“An apology, it seems to me, is rather trivial under the circumstances. I don’t know that I need pick and choose my words with you, Mr. Lacour. Doesn’t it occur to you that, all things considered, you have been behaving in a thoroughly dishonourable way—doing what no gentleman could think of? If I am not mistaken, you were lately in the habit of professing a desire for my good opinion; how do you reconcile that with this utter disregard of my claims to respect?”

“Mrs. Clarendon, it is dreadful to hear you speaking to me in this way. You have every right to be angry with me; I reproach myself more than you reproach me. I did not think of you in connection with Miss Warren. I could not distress or injure you wittingly.”

“I don’t know that you have it in your power to injure me,” was the cold reply. “I am distressed on your own account, for I fully believed you incapable of dishonour.”

“Good God! Do you wish me to throw myself at your feet and pray you to spare me? I cannot bear those words from you; they flay me. Think what you like of me, but don’t say it! You cannot amend me, but you can gash me to the quick, if it delights you to do that. I won’t ask you to pardon me; I am lower than you can stoop. The opinion of other people is nothing to me; I didn’t know till this moment that any one could lash me as you have done.”

Isabel was frightened at the violence of his words; they must have calmed a harsher nature than hers. His earnestness was all the more terrible from its contrast with his ordinary habit of speech, and his professed modes of thinking. His voice choked. Perhaps for the first time in her life Isabel recognised the fulness of her power over men.

“Mr. Lacour,” she said with grave gentleness, “is this the first of your visits to Miss Warren?”

“It is the first.”

“Will you promise me that it shall be the last—I mean of secret visits?”

“I will never see her again.”

“I exact no such promise as that; it is beyond my right. What I do regard as my right is the assurance that my ward has fair play. Her position is difficult beyond that of most girls. I have confidence in Ada Warren; I believe she respects me—perhaps I should say she recognises my claims as her guardian. My house is open to you when you come on the same footing as other gentlemen.”

“I cannot face you again.”

“Where do you intend to pass the night?” Isabel inquired, letting a brief silence reply to his last words.

“I have got a room at the inn in Winstoke.”

“And to-morrow morning you return to London?”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Bruce Page tells me your brother is making you an allowance. I am glad to hear that, and I hope you will heartily accept his conditions.”

“I shall try to read, but there’s small chance of it ever coming to anything. I’m one of those men who inevitably go to the dogs. A longer or shorter time, but the dogs eventually.”

“That is in your own hands. Shall I tell you what I think? Just one piece of my mind which perhaps you will rate cheaply enough. I think that a man who respects himself will make his own standing in life, and won’t be willing to be lifted on to smooth ground by any one, least of all by a woman’s weak hands. And now, good night to you.”

She left him and entered the house by the front door.

After breakfast next morning, Ada was in the library, walking from window to window, watching the course of clouds which threatened rain, at a loss, it seemed, how to employ herself. She was surprised by Mrs. Clarendon’s entrance.

“You haven’t settled to work yet?” Isabel said, looking at her rather timidly.

Ada merely shook her head and came towards the table. Mrs. Clarendon took up a book and glanced at it.

“What are you busy with now?” she asked lightly.

“Nothing in particular. I’ve just finished a novel that interests me.”

“A novel? Frivolous young woman! Oh, I know that book. It’s very nice, all but the ending, and that I don’t believe in. That extravagant self-sacrifice is unnatural; no man ever yet made such a sacrifice.”

“It doesn’t seem to me impossible,” said Ada. “No? It will some day.”

Isabel’s way of speaking was not altogether like herself; it was rather too direct and abrupt.

“Of a man, you think?”

Isabel laughed.

“Oh, of a woman much more! We are not so self-sacrificing as they make us out, Ada.” She took a seat on a chair which stood edgewise to the table, and rested her head against her hand.

“Will you sit down?” she asked invitingly, when the girl still kept her position at a distance.

“You wish to speak to me?”

Ada became seated where she was.

“You wish the distance to represent that which is always between us?” Isabel remarked, half sadly, half jestingly.

Ada seemed about to rise, but turned it off in an arrangement of her dress.

“When Mr. Asquith told you something from me a month ago,” Isabel continued, “did it occur to you that I had any motive in—in choosing just that time, in letting you know those things just when I did?”

Ada had fixed a keen and curious look on the speaker, a look which was troublesome in its intensity.

“I supposed,” was her measured reply, “that you thought I had come to the age when I ought to know something of the future that was before me.”

“Yes, that is true. You will credit me, will you not, with a desire to save you from being at a disadvantage?”

“Certainly.”

The word was rather ironically spoken.