‘In love with him!’ said Millicent. ‘I wonder if I am in love with him! If I were I could not think him such a fool. Poor fellow! he’s gone and robbed himself to send you to the baths, and you don’t want the baths any more than he does. He ought to marry Mary Westbury and settle down, and get back his money. Most likely he would get back his money if he married Mary. And yet I think I should hate her too; but that would be for the sake of the Manor, and not for Ben. I had set my heart on the Manor, and that lovely house in Berkeley Square. Oh, don’t speak to me! It’s too bad! I can’t bear it!’ cried Millicent, suddenly hiding her face in her hands.
Thus confused, not knowing what was in her own mind, Millicent Tracy ran on, driving her mother wild. She did not know what she meant any more than Mrs. Tracy did. Acute disappointment, a kind of reverence and admiration of Ben, mixed strangely with a worldling’s unfeigned astonishment and contempt at his simplicity, were in her mind. And there were other things besides. Regrets, not only for the house in Berkeley Square, but for the lost opportunity of perhaps catching at a different kind of life,--longings quite undefined and inarticulate for something better,--self-disgust, self-pity,--all of which took form somehow in this bitter outburst of ‘temper,’ and supreme, unspeakable discontent. Was she, after all, ‘in love’ with Ben? But how could Millicent answer that question, not knowing what love was? Sometimes she was seized with a sort of passionate kindness for him, gratitude for his devotion, always mingled with half contempt, half pity. In short, she did not know what was in her, vaguely struggling for the mastery. Principles which, perhaps, if good influence had been possible,--if!--poor hypothesis, that hangs about the road to ruin! And yet who knows what tears the angels may weep over those blind strugglings of the human soul towards something better, or of what account they may be in the eyes of One kinder than all angels? Who knows what such agitation means, what hopes rise with it, and in what blank sickening of soul and darkening of the world it comes to an end?
Mrs. Tracy frankly had no idea what her daughter could mean. She concluded she was tired, and had got worried over her packing, and perhaps was sorry to lose her lover,--for her mother was less stoical than the daughter, and prized a lover _quand même_. So the natural thing to do was to get the poor child to bed, and give her some more wine and water, and finish the work herself. ‘I will do that box for you,’ she said; ‘and remember, Millicent, you must be up early. You want more sleep than I do.’ She was up half the night herself, but did not mind it. It was a new campaign, and great thoughts were in the mother’s mind. Thus the two prepared themselves to set out to spend poor Ben Renton’s hundred pounds. He, too, slept little that night. When they got to the railway in the morning he was there, pale and feverish from want of sleep, and from excess of love and misery and hope. ‘I am going to work for you,’ he whispered, as he put Millicent into the carriage, with that look of anguish and passion and appropriation which made her somehow despise herself. His Millicent he called her once more, kissing her hand in open day, in sight of all the world. Oh, how could he be such a fool! And yet----