"A man placed as I am may fancy anything--things infinitely more unlikely. I sometimes hope she has never perceived my admiration. It seems strange and cruel, but I believe where a man cannot be beloved, nothing is so likely to make him _hated_ as his presuming to love. _There_ is the secret of half the tragedies we read of. The man cannot cease to love, and the idol of his passion not only disregards but insults it. It is their cruel nature; and thus the pangs of jealousy and the agitations of despair are heightened by a peculiar torture, the hardest of all hell's torture to endure."
"Well, I have seen you pretty often together, and you must see there is nothing of that kind," said Arden.
"You speak quite frankly, do you? For Heaven's sake don't spare me!" urged Longcluse.
"I say exactly what I think. There can't be any such feeling," said Arden.
Longcluse sighed, looked down thoughtfully, and then, raising his eyes again, he said--
"You must answer me another question, dear Arden, and I shall, for the present, task your kindness no more. If you think it a fair question, will you promise to answer me with unsparing frankness? Let me hear the worst."
"Does your sister like anyone in particular--is she attached to anyone--are her affections quite disengaged?"
"So far as I am aware, certainly. She never cared for any one among all the people who admired her, and I am quite certain such a thing could not be without my observing it," answered Richard Arden.
"I don't know; perhaps not," said Longcluse. "But there is a young friend of yours, who I thought was an admirer of Miss Arden's, and possibly a favoured one. You guess, I daresay, who it is I mean?"
"I give you my honour I have not the least idea."
"I mean an early friend of yours--a man about your own age--who has often been staying in Yorkshire and at Mortlake with you, and who was almost like a brother in your house--very intimate."
"Surely you can't mean Vivian Darnley?" exclaimed Richard Arden.
"Vivian Darnley? Why, he has hardly enough to live on, much less to marry on. He has not an idea of any such thing. If my father fancied such an absurdity possible, he would take measures to prevent his ever seeing her more. You could not have hit upon a more impossible man," he resumed, after a moment's examination of a theory which, notwithstanding, made him a little more uneasy than he would have cared to confess. "Darnley is no fool either, and I think he is a honourable fellow; and altogether, knowing him as I do, the thing is utterly incredible. And as for Alice, the idea of his imagining any such folly, I can undertake to say, positively never entered her mind."