Lady Middlesex quickly rejoined, "Will you let me speak to you as woman to woman, and forget for a moment our official relations?"
"Can you doubt it?" replied Miss Fitzherbert. "But remember that our wishes are not always under our control, and that, though I may not desire to remember to your prejudice what you say, I may not be able to free myself from recollection."
"And yet," said Lady Middlesex, with scarcely veiled irony, "the world says Miss Fitzherbert does not know what prejudice means!"
The slightest possible movement of impatience was all the rejoinder vouchsafed to this speech.
Lady Middlesex continued, "I spoke to you as strongly as I dared, as strongly as my position permitted, about my brother Reginald--Lord Reginald Paramatta. He suffers under a sense of injury. He is miserable. He feels that it is to you that he owes his removal to a distant station. He loves you, and does not know if he may venture to tell you so."
"No woman," replied Miss Fitzherbert, "is warranted in regarding with anger the love of a good man; but you know, or ought to know, that my life is consecrated to objects that are inconsistent with my entertaining the love you speak of."
"But," said Lady Middlesex, "can you be sure that it always will be so?"
"Nay," replied Lady Middlesex, "do not generalise. Let me at least enjoy the liberty you have accorded me. If you did not feel that there were possibilities for Reginald in conflict with your indifference, why should you trouble yourself with his removal?"
"I have not admitted that I am concerned in his removal."
Miss Fitzherbert was dismayed at the position into which she had allowed herself to be forced. She must either state what truth forbade or admit that to some extent Lord Reginald had obtained a hold on her thoughts.
"Other men," pursued Lady Middlesex, with remorseless directness, "have aspired as Reginald does; and you have known how to dispose of their aspirations without such a course as that of which my brother has been the object."
"I have understood," said Miss Fitzherbert, "that Lord Reginald is promoted to an important position, one that ought to be intensely gratifying to so comparatively young a man."
"My brother has only one wish, and you are its centre. He desires only one position."