"Quite happy, thank you. But I should have been happier still, I think, if I had been allowed to stay with your brother."
Sir Hastings drops his glasses. Good heavens! what kind of a girl is this!
"To stay with my brother! To _stay_," stammers he.
"Yes. He _is_ your brother, isn't he? The professor, I mean. I should quite have enjoyed living with him, but he wouldn't hear of it. He--he doesn't like me, I'm afraid?" Perpetua looks at him anxiously. A little hope that he will contradict Hardinge's statement animates her mind. To feel herself a burden to her guardian--to anyone--she, who in the old home had been nothing less than an idol! Surely Sir Hastings, his own brother, will say something, will tell her something to ease this chagrin at her heart.
"Who told you that?" asks Sir Hastings. "Did he himself? I shouldn't put it beyond him. He is a misogynist; a mere bookworm! Of no account. Do not waste a thought on him."
"That he detests the best part of life--that he has deliberately turned his back on all that makes our existence here worth the having. I should call him a fool, but that one so dislikes having an imbecile in one's family."
"The best part of life! You say he has turned his back on that." She lets her hands fall upon her knees, and turns a frowning, perplexed, but always lovely face to his. "What is it," asks she, "that best part?"
"Women!" returns he, slowly, undauntedly, in spite of the innocence, the serenity, that shines in the young and exquisite face before him.
Her eyes do not fall before his. She is plainly thinking. Yes; Mr. Hardinge was right, he will never like her. She is only a stay, a hindrance to him!
"I understand," says she sorrowfully. "He will not care--_ever_. I shall be always a trouble to him. He----"
"Why think of him?" says Sir Hastings contemptuously. He leans towards her: fired by her beauty, that is now enhanced by the regret that lies upon her pretty lips, he determines on pushing his cause at once. "If _he_ cannot appreciate you, others can--_I_ can. I----" He pauses; for the first time in his life, on such an occasion as this, he is conscious of a feeling of awkwardness. To tell a woman he loves her has been the simplest thing in the world hitherto, but now, when at last he is in earnest--when poverty has driven him to seek marriage with an heiress as a cure for all his ills--he finds himself tongue-tied; and not only by the importance of the situation, so far as money goes, but by the clear, calm, waiting eyes of Perpetua.