Volume I Part 22 (2/2)
She shrank from his outstretched hands.
”I cannot,” she said. ”I cannot! It is impossible. I can never never give you the love you ask.”
”You think so now, Margaret--I may call you Margaret--you are so young you do not know; will you not try, can you not let me hope?”
”Do you not see,” she said, with the soft rebuke in her eyes that an angel might have had, ”that love must come? And there is something else.”
”Will you not tell me?” he spoke in a lower voice.
”I shall offend you.”
”You cannot offend me.”
”When I love--if I love--it must be a man,” she said, and her face glowed, ”a man who does not require the guidance of a weak girl, but who does what he has to do from a high sense of right, who has high aims, who is above me in all things.”
”This is folly!” he exclaimed angrily; ”you would ruin all my happiness from some vague and ideal sense of right. You will never meet with this ideal. All men will look up to you, beautiful Margaret. You will never find one above you.”
”Perhaps not,” she said, ”but then I will never love.”
They parted, she grieved but firm, and he miserable and dispirited. He felt the truth of much that she said, and was sufficiently in love to think her just while he deemed her cruel.
”Had my mother acted differently,” he thought, with bitterness, ”had she made me play a man's part!” and then a blush of shame rose to his face.
”Why blame her? Was this worthy?” He strode off and sought in rapid motion to still his disappointment. No one must ever know, and Margaret was so young. At some future time, perhaps.
Thus it happened that when poor Lady Lyons gave him her well-meant caution his laugh was full of bitterness.
She noticed, however, and took great credit to herself for having so influenced him that her son avoided Margaret; and not in the least understanding, simply thinking that he was following her advice, she thought that his avoidance was perhaps too marked. Mother-like she must interfere a little, he should draw back but not so pointedly as to make going forward impossible; supposing....
”You are a dear, good boy,” she said fondly to him in the evening, when, with a book before him and his gloomy eyes fixed on the fire, he was sitting, dreading her observation of his countenance; ”you are always so good in following your poor old mother's advice. I see you leave the Rivers girls alone. You must not overdo it, dear. If there is money--if it would not be an imprudence it would not be a bad thing, and then, you know, they might resent your having given them _quite_ up. Could you not keep friends without----”
”Without what, mother?” he asked, in a hoa.r.s.e voice which startled her a little.
”I am hunting for a word, my dear,” she answered candidly; ”I want a word to express my meaning and that would not sound too strong.”
Paul laughed ironically.
”Hunt on, mother, and when you have found the word you can tell me again.”
”It is so tiresome of you to laugh, but what I want to say is, that there would be no harm in your paying a certain amount of attention, always providing you did not _quite_ commit yourself.”
”And if the girl got fond of me,” asked Paul, looking at her with glowing eyes, ”what then, if I had not committed myself?”
”My dear Paul! No well-brought-up girl would think of getting fond of you, would be in love with you, till you had said something. At least,”
said Lady Lyons, drawing herself up and looking very virtuous, ”in my younger days girls would have thought it very wrong.”
”Now it strikes me, mother, that this idea of yours is very cold-blooded and cruel; does your love for me so blind you that you cannot see this?”
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