And if with it all you remain unhappy, why then you see I don't know what to do.""Oh, I know--I behave very badly!" Lady Cressage had risen, and with visible agitation began now to pace the room.
"I deserve to be thrown into the lake--I know it well enough! But Celia--truly--I'm as incapable of understanding it as you are. It must be that I am possessed by devils--like the people in the New Testament.
Perhaps someone will come along who can cast them out.
I don't seem able to do it myself. I can't rule myself at all. It needs a strength I haven't got!""Ah!" said Celia, thoughtfully. The excited sentences which Edith threw over her shoulder as she walked appeared, upon examination, to contain a suggestion.
"My dear child, "she asked abruptly, after a moment's silence, "do you want to marry?"Lady Cressage paused at the mantel, and exchanged a long steadfast glance with her friend. Then she came slowly forward. "Ah, that is what I don't know,"she answered. Apparently the reply was candid.
Miss Madden pursed her lips, and frowned a little in thought. Then, at some passing reflection, she smiled in a puzzled fashion. At last she also rose, and went to the mantel for another cigarette. "Now Iam going to talk plainly," she said, with decision.
"Since the subject is mentioned, less harm will be done by speaking out than by keeping still. There is a debate in your mind on the matter, isn't there?"The other lady, tall, slender, gently ruminative once more, stood at the window and with bowed head looked down at the lake. "Yes--I suppose it might be called that,"she replied, in a low voice.
"And you hesitate to tell me about it? You would rather not?" Celia, after an instant's pause, went on without waiting for an answer. "I beg that you won't assume my hostility to the idea, Edith. In fact, I'm not sure I don't think it would be the best thing for you to do. Marriage, a home, children--these are great things to a woman. We can say that she pays the price of bondage for them--but to know what that signifies, we must ask what her freedom has been worth to her.""Yes," interposed the other, from the window. "What have I done with my freedom that has been worth while?""Not much," murmured Celia, under her breath.
She moved forward, and stood beside Edith, with an arm round her waist. They looked together at the lake.
"It is Lord Plowden, is it not?" asked the American, as the silence grew constrained.
Lady Cressage looked up alertly, and then hesitated over her reply. "No," she said at last. Upon reflection, and with a dim smile flickering in her side-long glance at Celia, she added, "He wants to marry you, you know.""Leave that out of consideration," said Celia, composedly.
"He has never said so. I think it was more his mother's idea than his, if it existed at all. Of course I am not marrying him, or anybody else. But I saw at Hadlow that you and he were--what shall I say?--old friends.""He must marry money," the other replied. In an unexpected burst of candour she went on: "He would have asked me to marry him if I had had money. There is no harm in telling you that. It was quite understood--oh, two years ago.
And I think I wished I had the money--then."
"And you don't wish it now?"
A slight shake of Edith's small, shapely head served for answer. After a little, she spoke in a musing tone:
"He is going to have money of his own, very soon, but Idon't think it would attract me now. I like him personally, of course, but--there is no career, no ambition, no future.""A Viscount has future enough behind him," observed Celia.
"It doesn't attract me," the other repeated, vaguely.
"He is handsome, and clever, and kind and all that--but he would never appeal to any of the great emotions--nor be capable of them himself He is too smooth, too well-balanced, too much the gentleman. That expresses it badly--but do you see what I mean?"Celia turned, and studied the beautiful profile beside her, in a steady, comprehending look.
"Yes, I think I see what you mean," she said, with significance in her tone.
Lady Cressage flushed, and released herself from her companion's arm. "But I don't know myself what I mean!"she exclaimed, despairingly, as she moved away. "I don't know!--I don't know!"
