Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 30, September, 1873

"A little time! But think how much time you have had!" the gentleman urged, not without reason. "You said when I went abroad that you were not sure enough of your heart to accept me then, but that you would give me a final answer when I returned. You had all the months of my absence to consider what this answer should be, and when I came for it, spending not so much as an hour in tarrying on the road, I found that it was not ready for me—that I had yet longer to wait. Eleanor, is this kind? is it even just?"

"It is neither," said Eleanor, turning to him with a strange deprecation on her fair proud face. "I know that you have been everything that is patient and generous, and I am sorry—oh I am more than sorry—to have seemed to trifle with you; but what can I do? Remember that when I decide, it is for my whole life. You cannot doubt that I will hold fast to my promise when it is once given."

"I do not doubt it, and therefore I desire that promise above all things."

"But you would not desire the letter without the spirit?" said she eagerly. "I dare not bind myself—I dare not—until I am certain of myself."

"But, good Heavens!" said Marston Brent, who, although usually the most quiet and dignified of human beings, was now fairly driven to vehemence, "when do you mean to be certain of yourself? Surely you have had time enough. Can you not love me, Eleanor?" he asked a little wistfully. "If that is it—if that is the doubt that holds you back—say so, and let me go. Anything is better than suspense like this."

But Eleanor was plainly not ready to say that. She stood still for a moment, then turned to him with a sudden light of resolve in her eyes. "You are right," she said. "This must end. I may be weak and foolish, but I have no right to make you suffer for my weakness and my folly. I pledge myself to tell you to-morrow night whether or not I can be your wife. You will give me till then, will you not? It is the last delay I shall ask."

"I wish you would understand that you could not ask anything which I should not be glad to grant," said he, a little sadly. "For Heaven's sake, do not think of me as your persecutor—do not force yourself to answer me at any given time. I can wait."

"You have waited," said she gratefully—"waited too long already. Do not encourage me in my weakness. Believe that I will tell you to-morrow night my final decision."

Later in the evening, Victor Clare was leaving the drawing-room as Miss Milbourne entered it. They came face to face rather unexpectedly, and while the gentleman fell back, the lady extended her hand.

"Have you stayed away so long that you have forgotten your friends, Major Clare?" she said with a smile which was bright but rather tremulous, like a gleam of sunshine on rippling water. "You have not even said good-evening to me, and yet you have an air as if you had said good-night to the rest of the company."

"So I have," answered Victor, smiling in turn, partly from the pleasure of meeting her, partly from the sheer magnetism of her glance, "but it is no fault of mine that I have not been able to speak to you: I have found no opportunity."

"But I thought you always said that; people made opportunities when they desired to do so?"

"Then the time has come for me to retract my assertion. As a general rule, a man cannot make opportunities: he can only take advantage of them when they come, as I hope to take advantage of the present," he added smiling.

"But I thought you were going home?"

"I was going home a minute ago, but so long as you will let me talk to you I shall stay."

"It is a very small favor to grant," said Eleanor, blushing a little. "But why were you leaving so early?"

"Partly because I had no hope of seeing you; partly because I am not a 'young duke' to pencil a line to my steward and know that a princely collation will be served at noon to-morrow for half a hundred, or even for a dozen or two people."

"What do you mean?" she asked, for though she caught the allusion to Disraeli's rose-colored romance, the application puzzled her.

"I see you have not heard of our gypsy plan," he answered, and at once proceeded to detail it.

She was not so much delighted as he expected, but a pretty, lucid gleam came into her eyes at the mention of Claremont.

"I shall be glad to see your home," she said quietly. "I have heard so much of its beauty and its antiquity."

"It is pretty, and it is old," said he, "but it will not be mine much longer. I am negotiating its sale now."

She started: "What! you were in earnest, then? You are really going to Egypt?"

"Yes, I am going to Egypt. Why should I stay? What has life to offer me here save vegetation? There, at least, I can find action."

She looked at him with a strange, wistful expression which struck and startled him. He felt as if a prisoned soul suddenly sprang up and gazed at him out of the clear blue depths of her eyes. "Oh what a good thing it is to be a man!" she said. "How free you are! how able to do what you please and go where you please—to seek action and to find it! Oh, Major Clare, you ought to thank God night and day that He did not make you a woman!"

"I am glad, certainly, that I am a man," said Victor honestly. "But you are the last woman in the world from whom I should have expected to hear such rebellious sentiments."

"I am not rebellious," said Eleanor more quietly. "What is the good of it? All the rebellion in the world could not make me a man; and I have no fancy to be an unsexed woman. But nobody was ever more weary of conventional routine, nobody ever longed more for freedom and action than I do."

It was on the end of Victor's tongue to say, "Then come with me to Egypt," but he caught himself in time. Was he mad to imagine that "the beautiful Miss Milbourne"—a woman at whose feet the most desirable matches of "society" had been laid—would end her brilliant career by marrying a soldier of fortune, and expatriating herself from her country and her kindred? He gave a grim sort of smile which Eleanor did not quite understand, as he said: "Where is your lotos? It ought to make you more content with the things that be."

"I have it," Eleanor said with child-like simplicity. "Mr. Brent remembered and brought it to me. I have not forgotten my promise to share it with you."

"Take it to the mountain to-morrow night, then," said he quickly. "Let us eat it together there. I should like to link you even with my farewell to the past."

And, since an interruption came just then, they parted with this understanding.

The next day Major Clare was standing on the terrace of Claremont—a stately, solidly-built old house, bearing itself with an air of conscious pride and disdain of modern frippery, despite certain significant signs of decay—when his guests arrived in formidable procession. There was something of the "old school" in his manner of welcoming them—a grace and courtesy which struck more than one of them as at once very perfect and very charming.

"The man suits the house, does he not?" said Mrs. Brantley to Mrs. Lancaster. "It is like a vintage of rare old wine in an old bottle. We fancy that it has an aroma which it would lose in a new cut-glass decanter."

"I always thought Major Clare had delightful manners," said Mrs. Lancaster, who could not trust herself to say anything more. She felt with a pang how much she would have liked to bring wealth and prosperity and elegant hospitality back again to the old house, if its owner had not been so madly blind to his own interest, so absurdly in love with Eleanor Milbourne's statue-like face, so insanely intent upon periling life and limb in the service of the viceroy of Egypt. The pretty widow gave a sigh as she arranged her hair before the quaint, old-fashioned mirror in the chamber to which the ladies had been conducted. If he had only been reasonable, how different things might be! She walked to a window which overlooked the garden with its formal walks and terraces, its borders of box and summer-houses of cedar. "He will change his mind before the month is out," she thought. "A man cannot surrender all the associations of his past and the home of his fathers without a struggle."

This consideration lost some of its consoling force, however, when, a few minutes later, two people, walking slowly and evidently talking earnestly, passed down the vista of one of the garden alleys, and were lost to sight behind a tall, clipped hedge. Even at that distance there was no mistaking the figure and bearing of Clare; neither was there another woman who walked with that free, stately grace in a riding-habit which Eleanor Milbourne possessed. "If she is engaged to Marston Brent, he might certainly put an end to such open flirtation as this," Mrs. Lancaster said between her teeth. "If he were not blind or mad, he might see that she is so much in love with Victor that she would go with him to Egypt to-morrow if he asked her to do so."

An old and sensible proverb with which we are all acquainted says that it is never well to judge others by ourselves; and if Mrs. Lancaster had possessed the invisible cap of the prince in the fairy-tale, and had followed the pair who had just passed out of sight, she would have received an immediate proof of the truth of this aphorism. They had paused in a square near the heart of the garden—a green, shaded spot, in the centre of which an empty basin bore witness to a departed fountain, though no pleasant murmur of water had broken the stillness for many a long day. Round the margin of this still ran a seat on which Eleanor sat down. Victor remained standing before her. A lime tree near by cast a soft, flickering shadow over them, and the tall hedges of evergreen which enclosed the square made a sombre but effective background.

"You see that ruin and decay are all that I have to offer you here," Victor was saying with a cadence of bitterness in his voice. "But if you had courage enough to end the life which you despise, to cut loose from all the ties which bind you in America, and go with me to Egypt, there I might have a future and a career for you to share—there at least, you would find freedom and action and life."

A flush came to Eleanor's cheek, and a light gleamed suddenly in her eyes, as if the very wildness of this proposal lent it fascination; but she shook her head, smiling a little sadly. "You are of my world," she said: "you ought to know better than that. I am not so brave as you think. I must do what is expected of me, and I am expected to marry Marston Brent."

"Forget the world and come with me."

"That is impossible. If I had only myself to care for, I would; but there are others of whom I must think." She was silent for a moment, then looked up at him piteously. "They have sacrificed so much for me at home," she said, "and they are so proud of me. They hope, desire, count on this marriage: I cannot disappoint them. Mr. Brent himself has been most kind and patient, and he does not expect very much. I am a coward, perhaps, but what can I do?"

Again he said, "You can come with me."

Again she answered, "It is impossible. Do you not see that it is impossible? Starting forth on a new career, it would be insane for you to burden yourself with a wife. As for me, I am no more fit to marry a poor man than to be a housemaid. Victor, it is hopeless. For Heaven's sake, let us talk of it no longer! The only thing we can do is to forget that we have ever talked of it at all."

"Will that be easy for you? I confess that nothing on earth could be harder for me."

"No, it will not be easy, but I shall try with all my strength to do it. God only knows," putting her hand suddenly to her face, "how I shall live if I am not able to do it." Then passionately, "Why did you speak? Why did you make the misery greater by dragging it to the light, so that we could face it, talk of it, discuss it? Oh why did you do it?"

"Because I wanted to see if you were not made of braver stuff than other women," said he almost sternly. "In my maddest hours I never dreamed of speaking, until—what you said last night. Thinking of that after I came home, I resolved to give you one opportunity to break through the artificial trammels of your life, and find the freedom you professed to desire. It was better to do this, I thought, than to be tormented all my life by a regret, a doubt, lest I had lost happiness where one bold stroke might have gained it."

"And now that you have found that I am not brave, that I am like all the other conventional women of my class, are you not sorry that you have inflicted useless pain upon yourself?"

"Of myself I do not think at all, and even when I think of you I cannot regret having spoken. Let the misery be what it will, it is something to have faced it together—it is everything to know that you love me, though you refuse to share my life."

"You must not say that," said she, starting and shrinking as if from a blow. "How can I venture to acknowledge that I love you when I am going to marry Marston Brent?"

"Are you going to marry him?"

"Have I not told you so?"