Raising her head, she looks contemptuously in his face, and repeats, 'You tell me! Tell me, forsooth!'
She affects not to know that his eyes are fastened on her as she droops her head again; but her whole figure reveals that she knows it uneasily.
'Enough of this. Come! Do you hear? Get up.'
Yielding to his hand, she rises, and they walk again; but this time with their faces turned towards their place of residence.
'Mrs Lammle, we have both been deceiving, and we have both been deceived. We have both been biting, and we have both been bitten. In a nut-shell, there's the state of the case.'
'You sought me out--'
'Tut! Let us have done with that. WE know very well how it was.
Why should you and I talk about it, when you and I can't disguise it? To proceed. I am disappointed and cut a poor figure.'
'Am I no one?'
'Some one--and I was coming to you, if you had waited a moment.
You, too, are disappointed and cut a poor figure.'
'An injured figure!'
'You are now cool enough, Sophronia, to see that you can't be injured without my being equally injured; and that therefore the mere word is not to the purpose. When I look back, I wonder how I can have been such a fool as to take you to so great an extent upon trust.'
'And when I look back--' the bride cries, interrupting.
'And when you look back, you wonder how you can have been--you'll excuse the word?'
'Most certainly, with so much reason.
'--Such a fool as to take ME to so great an extent upon trust. But the folly is committed on both sides. I cannot get rid of you; you cannot get rid of me. What follows?'
'Shame and misery,' the bride bitterly replies.
'I don't know. A mutual understanding follows, and I think it may carry us through. Here I split my discourse (give me your arm, Sophronia), into three heads, to make it shorter and plainer.
Firstly, it's enough to have been done, without the mortification of being known to have been done. So we agree to keep the fact to ourselves. You agree?'
'If it is possible, I do.'
'Possible! We have pretended well enough to one another. Can't we, united, pretend to the world? Agreed. Secondly, we owe the Veneerings a grudge, and we owe all other people the grudge of wishing them to be taken in, as we ourselves have been taken in.
Agreed?'
'Yes. Agreed.'
'We come smoothly to thirdly. You have called me an adventurer, Sophronia. So I am. In plain uncomplimentary English, so I am.
So are you, my dear. So are many people. We agree to keep our own secret, and to work together in furtherance of our own schemes.'
'What schemes?'
'Any scheme that will bring us money. By our own schemes, Imean our joint interest. Agreed?'
She answers, after a little hesitation, 'I suppose so. Agreed.'
'Carried at once, you see! Now, Sophronia, only half a dozen words more. We know one another perfectly. Don't be tempted into twitting me with the past knowledge that you have of me, because it is identical with the past knowledge that I have of you, and in twitting me, you twit yourself, and I don't want to hear you do it. With this good understanding established between us, it is better never done. To wind up all:--You have shown temper today, Sophronia. Don't be betrayed into doing so again, because I have a Devil of a temper myself.'
So, the happy pair, with this hopeful marriage contract thus signed, sealed, and delivered, repair homeward. If, when those infernal finger-marks were on the white and breathless countenance of Alfred Lammle, Esquire, they denoted that he conceived the purpose of subduing his dear wife Mrs Alfred Lammle, by at once divesting her of any lingering reality or pretence of self-respect, the purpose would seem to have been presently executed. The mature young lady has mighty little need of powder, now, for her downcast face, as he escorts her in the light of the setting sun to their abode of bliss.
