Dr Thorne - Anthony Trollope [137]
‘I have never thought of your money,’ said Frank, surlily.
‘But it grieves me,’ continued she, ‘it does grieve me, to think that you, you, you – so young, so gay, so bright – that you should have looked for it in this way. From others I have taken it just as the wind that whistles’; and now two big slow tears escaped from her eyes, and would have rolled down her rosy cheeks, were it not that she brushed them off with the back of her hand.
‘You have utterly mistaken me, Miss Dunstable,’ said Frank.
‘If I have, I will humbly beg your pardon,’ said she. ‘But – but – but –’
‘You have; indeed you have.’
‘How can I have mistaken you? Were you not about to say that you loved me; to talk absolute nonsense; to make me an offer? If you were not, if I have mistaken you indeed, I will beg your pardon.’
Frank had nothing further to say in his own defence. He had not wanted Miss Dunstable’s money – that was true; but he could not deny that he had been about to talk that absolute nonsense of which she spoke with so much scorn.
‘You would almost make me think that there are none honest in this fashionable world of yours. I well know why Lady de Courcy has had me here: how could I help knowing it? She has been so foolish in her plans that ten times a day she has told her own secret. But I have said to myself twenty times, that if she were crafty, you were honest.’
‘And am I dishonest?’
‘I have laughed in my sleeve to see how she played her game, and to hear others around playing theirs; all of them thinking that they could get the money of the poor fool who had come at their beck and call; but I was able to laugh at them as long as I thought that I had one true friend to laugh with me. But one cannot laugh with all the world against one.’
‘I am not against you, Miss Dunstable.’
‘Sell yourself for money! why, if I were a man I would not sell one jot of liberty for mountains of gold. What! tie myself in the heyday of my youth to a person I could never love, for a price! perjure myself, destroy myself – and not only myself, but her also, in order that I might live idly! Oh, heavens! Mr Gresham! can it be that the words of such a woman as your aunt have sunk so deeply in your heart; have blackened you so foully as to make you think of such vile folly as this? Have you forgotten your soul, your spirit, your man’s energy, the treasure of your heart? And you, so young! For shame, Mr Gresham! for shame – for shame!’
Frank found the task before him by no means an easy one. He had to make Miss Dunstable understand that he had never had the slightest idea of marrying her, and that he had made love to her merely with the object of keeping his hand in for the work as it were; with that object, and the other equally laudable one of interfering with his cousin George.
And yet there was nothing for him but to get through this task as best he might. He was goaded to it by the accusations which Miss Dunstable brought against him; and he began to feel, that though her invectives against him might be bitter when he had told the truth, they could not be so bitter as those she now kept hinting at under her mistaken impression as to his views. He had never had any strong propensity for money-hunting; but now that offence appeared in his eyes abominable, unmanly, and disgusting. Any imputation would be better than that.
‘Miss Dunstable, I never for a moment thought of doing what you accuse me of; on my honour, I never did. I have been very foolish – very wrong – idiotic, I believe; but I have never intended that.’
‘Then, Mr Gresham, what did you intend?’
This was rather a difficult question to answer; and Frank was not very quick in attempting it. ‘I know you will not forgive me,’ he said at last; ‘and, indeed, I do not see how you can. I don’t know how it came about; but this is certain, Miss Dunstable; I have never for a moment thought about your fortune; that is, thought about it in the way of coveting it.’
‘You never thought