"What would you have done?" I whispered, subdued for the moment, but obstinate in my heart as ever.
"I am nobody now; no one knows me. But if I had had the chance that you have had to-night, in another year I would have been known and envied by half the women in England. Bah! Circumstances are too disgusting, too unkind!"
"Oh! Adelaide, nothing could have made up for being tied to that man," said I, in a small voice; "and I am not ambitious."
"Ambitious! You are selfish--downright, grossly, inordinately selfish. Do you suppose no one else ever had to do what they did not like? Why did you not stop to think instead of rushing away from the thing like some unreasoning animal?"
"Adelaide! Sir Peter! To marry him?" I implored in tears. "How could I? I should die of shame at the very thought. Who could help seeing that I had sold myself to him?"
"And who would think any the worse of you? And what if they did? With fifteen thousand a year you may defy public opinion."
"Oh, don't! don't!" I cried, covering my face with my hands. "Adelaide, you will break my heart!"
Burying my face in the bed-quilt, I sobbed irrepressibly. Adelaide's apparent unconsciousness of, or callousness to, the stabs she was giving me, and the anguish they caused me, almost distracted me.
She loosed my arm, remarking, with bitter vexation:
She left the room. I was left to my meditations. My head--my heart too--ached distractingly; my arm was sore where Adelaide had grasped it; I felt as if she had taken my mind by the shoulders and shaken it roughly. I fastened both doors of my room, resolving that neither she nor any one else should penetrate to my presence again that night.
What was I to do? Where to turn? I began now to realize that the _Res dom_, which had always seemed to me so abundant for all occasions, were really _Res Angusta_, and that circumstances might occur in which they would be miserably inadequate.
"Zu Rathe gehen, und vom Rath zur That." _Briefe_ BEETHOVEN'S.
There was surely not much in Miss Hallam to encourage confidences; yet within half an hour of the time of entering her house I had told her all that oppressed my heart, and had gained a feeling of greater security than I had yet felt. I was sure that she would befriend me. True, she did not say so. When I told her about Sir Peter Le Marchant's proposal to me, about Adelaide's behavior; when, in halting and stammering tones, and interrupted by tears, I confessed that I had not spoken to my father or mother upon the subject, and that I was not quite sure of their approval of what I had done, she even laughed a little, but not in what could be called an amused manner. When I had finished my tale, she said: