Sometimes he talked a little to his future brother-in-law, Harry,-- assuming, as lovers are wont, that brothers see sisters on their ideal side. This was quite true of Harry and Hope, but not at all true as regarded Emilia. She seemed to him simply a beautiful and ungoverned girl whom he could not respect, and whom he therefore found it very hard to idealize. Therefore he heard with a sort of sadness the outpourings of generous devotion from John Lambert.
"I don't know how it is, Henry," the merchant would gravely say, "I can't get rightly used to it, that I feel so strange. Honestly, now, I feel as if I was beginning life over again. It ain't a selfish feeling, so I know there's some good in it. I used to be selfish enough, but I ain't so to her. You may not think it, but if it would make her happy, I believe I could lie down and let her carriage roll over me. By -----, I would build her a palace to live in, and keep the lodge at the gate myself, just to see her pass by. That is, if she was to live in it alone by herself. I couldn't stand sharing her. It must be me or nobody."Probably there was no male acquaintance of the parties, however hardened, to whom these fine flights would have seemed more utterly preposterous than to the immediate friend and prospective bridesmaid, Miss Blanche Ingleside. To that young lady, trained sedulously by a devoted mother, life was really a serious thing. It meant the full rigor of the marriage market, tempered only by dancing and new dresses. There was a stern sense of duty beneath all her robing and disrobing; she conscientiously did what was expected of her, and took her little amusements meanwhile. It was supposed that most of the purchasers in the market preferred slang and bare shoulders, and so she favored them with plenty of both. It was merely the law of supply and demand. Had John Lambert once hinted that he would accept her in decent black, she would have gone to the next ball as a Sister of Charity; but where was the need of it, when she and her mother both knew that, had she appeared as the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, she would not have won him? So her only resource was a cheerful acquiescence in Emilia's luck, and a judicious propitiation of the accepted favorite.
"I wouldn't mind playing Virtue Rewarded myself, young woman," said Blanche, "at such a scale of prices. I would do it even to so slow an audience as old Lambert. But you see, it isn't my line. Don't forget your humble friends when you come into your property, that's all." Then the tender coterie of innocents entered on some preliminary consideration of wedding-dresses.
When Emilia came home, she dismissed the whole matter lightly as a settled thing, evaded all talk with Aunt Jane, and coolly said to Kate that she had no objection to Mr. Lambert, and might as well marry him as anybody else.
"I am not like you and Hal, you know," said she. "I have no fancy for love in a cottage. I never look well in anything that is not costly. I have not a taste that does not imply a fortune. What is the use of love? One marries for love, and is unhappy ever after. One marries for money, and perhaps gets love after all. I dare say Mr. Lambert loves me, though I do not see why he should.""I fear he does," said Kate, almost severely. "Fear?" said Emilia.
"Yes," said Kate. "It is an unequal bargain, where one side does all the loving.""Don't be troubled," said Emilia. "I dare say he will not love me long. Nobody ever did!" And her eyes filled with tears which she dashed away angrily, as she ran up to her room.
It was harder yet for her to talk with Hope, but she did it, and that in a very serious mood. She had never been so open with her sister.
"Aunt Jane once told me," she said, "that my only safety was in marrying a good man. Now I am engaged to one.""Do you love him, Emilia?" asked Hope, gravely.
"Not much," said Emilia, honestly."But perhaps I shall, by and by." "Emilia," cried Hope, "there is no such thing as happiness in amarriage without love."
"Mine is not without love," the girl answered. "He loves me. It frightens me to see how much he loves me. I can have the devotion of alifetime, if I will. Perhaps it is hard to receive it in such a way, but I can have it. Do you blame me very much?"Hope hesitated. "I cannot blame you so much, my child," she said, "as if I thought it were money for which you cared. It seems to me that there must be something beside that, and yet--""O Hope, how I thank you," interrupted Emilia. "It is not money. You know I do not care about money, except just to buy my clothes and things. At least, I do not care about so much as he has,--more than a million dollars, only think! Perhaps they said two million. Is it wrong for me to marry him, just because he has that?""Not if you love him."
"I do not exactly love him, but O Hope, I cannot tell you about it. I am not so frivolous as you think. I want to do my duty. I want to make you happy too: you have been so sweet to me.""Did you think it would make me happy to have you married?" asked Hope, surprised, and kissing again and again the young, sad face. And the two girls went upstairs together, brought for the moment into more sisterly nearness by the very thing that had seemed likely to set them forever apart.
