The Way We Live Now - Anthony Trollope (top 5 books to read txt) 📗

supported her in her misery by his continued counsel. If he would offer to do this thing for her she would accept his kindness on her knees⁠—but even she could not bring herself to ask to have this added to his other favours. Her first word to him was about Mr. Alf. “So he has given up the paper?”

“Well, yes;⁠—nominally.”

“Is that all?”

“I don’t suppose he’ll really let it go out of his own hands. Nobody likes to lose power. He’ll share the work, and keep the authority. As for Westminster, I don’t believe he has a chance. If that poor wretch Melmotte could beat him when everybody was already talking about the forgeries, how is it likely that he should stand against such a candidate as they’ll get now?”

“He was here yesterday.”

“And full of triumph, I suppose?”

“He never talks to me much of himself. We were speaking of my new book⁠—my novel. He assured me most positively that he had nothing further to do with the paper.”

“He did not care to make you a promise, I dare say.”

“That was just it. Of course I did not believe him.”

“Neither will I make a promise, but we’ll see what we can do. If we can’t be good-natured, at any rate we will say nothing ill-natured. Let me see⁠—what is the name?”

“The Wheel of Fortune.” Lady Carbury as she told the title of her new book to her old friend seemed to be almost ashamed of it.

“Let them send it early⁠—a day or two before it’s out, if they can. I can’t answer, of course, for the opinion of the gentleman it will go to, but nothing shall go in that you would dislike. Goodbye. God bless you.” And as he took her hand, he looked at her almost as though the old susceptibility were returning to him.

As she sat alone after he had gone, thinking over it all⁠—thinking of her own circumstances and of his kindness⁠—it did not occur to her to call him an old goose again. She felt now that she had mistaken her man when she had so regarded him. That first and only kiss which he had given her, which she had treated with so much derision, for which she had rebuked him so mildly and yet so haughtily, had now a somewhat sacred spot in her memory. Through it all the man must have really loved her! Was it not marvellous that such a thing should be? And how had it come to pass that she in all her tenderness had rejected him when he had given her the chance of becoming his wife?

XC Hetta’s Sorrow

When Hetta Carbury received that letter from her lover which was given to the reader some chapters back, it certainly did not tend in any way to alleviate her misery. Even when she had read it over half-a-dozen times, she could not bring herself to think it possible that she could be reconciled to the man. It was not only that he had sinned against her by giving his society to another woman to whom he had at any rate been engaged not long since, at the very time at which he was becoming engaged to her⁠—but also that he had done this in such a manner as to make his offence known to all her friends. Perhaps she had been too quick;⁠—but there was the fact that with her own consent she had acceded to her mother’s demand that the man should be rejected. The man had been rejected, and even Roger Carbury knew that it was so. After this it was, she thought, impossible that she should recall him. But they should all know that her heart was unchanged. Roger Carbury should certainly know that, if he ever asked her further question on the matter. She would never deny it; and though she knew that the man had behaved badly⁠—having entangled himself with a nasty American woman⁠—yet she would be true to him as far as her own heart was concerned.

And now he told her that she had been most unjust to him. He said that he could not understand her injustice. He did not fill his letter with entreaties, but with reproaches. And certainly his reproaches moved her more than any prayer would have done. It was too late now to remedy the evil; but she was not quite sure within her own bosom that she had not been unjust to him. The more she thought of it the more puzzled her mind became. Had she quarrelled with him because he had once been in love with Mrs. Hurtle, or because she had grounds for regarding Mrs. Hurtle as her present rival? She hated Mrs. Hurtle, and she was very angry with him in that he had ever been on affectionate terms with a woman she hated;⁠—but that had not been the reason put forward by her for quarrelling with him. Perhaps it was true that he, too, had of late loved Mrs. Hurtle hardly better than she did herself. It might be that he had been indeed constrained by hard circumstances to go with the woman to Lowestoft. Having so gone with her, it was no doubt right that he should be rejected;⁠—for how can it be that a man who is engaged shall be allowed to travel about the country with another woman to whom also he was engaged a few months back? But still there might be hardship in it. To her, to Hetta herself, the circumstances were very hard. She loved the man with all her heart. She could look forward to no happiness in life without him. But yet it must be so.

At the end of his letter he had told her to go to Mrs. Hurtle herself if she wanted corroboration of the story as told by him. Of course he had known when he wrote it that she could not and would not go to Mrs. Hurtle. But when the letter had