And that madly merry laughter is the end. I should go crazy if I yielded to love that I can't return, and I should despise him if he accepted. A husband not too impassioned, a fair bargain--beauty bartered for position, power, for a name in history--that is all there is left to me, now that love has vanished.
The farm! I couldn't go back, to isolation and dull routine! I told John I might go abroad. Why not? I might see the great capitals, and in the splendour of palaces find a fitting frame for my beauty. There may be salve for heartache in the smile of princes. At any rate, the seas would flow between me and Ned Hynes.
I had forgotten my ambitions. I'd have said to Ned: "Whither thou goest I will go;" but if what he feels for me is not love--if in his heart he hates me for the witchery I've put upon him--
I could go abroad with a title, if I chose. If love lies not my way, there is Strathay.
How listless I am, turning from my sorrow to write of what to most girls would be a delight--of that pathetic little figure, toadied and flattered, but keeping a good heart through it all; of his marked attentions, which I permit because they keep other men away; of his efforts to see me--for the Van Dams' position isn't what I imagined it, and we are not invited to many houses where I could meet him; of Meg's rejoicings over a few of the cards we do receive.
Oh, I win her triumphs, triumphs in plenty! Because the Earl admires me, hasn't she once sat at the same table with Mrs. Sloane Schuyler, who refuses to meet intimately more than a hundred New York women; and hasn't she twice or thrice talked "autos" with Mrs. Fredericks; and isn't she envied by all the women of her own set because the Earl and his cousin shine refulgent from her box at the Opera?
Triumphs, certainly; doesn't Mrs. Henry wrangle with Meg over my poor body, demanding that I sit in her box, and that I join Peggy's Badminton club, and bring the Earl, who would bring the youths and maidens who would bring the prestige that would, some day, make a Newport cottage socially feasible?
That's her dream, Meg's is Mayfair; she thinks of nothing but how to invest me in London and claim her profit when I am Strathay's Countess, or mistress of some other little great man's hall. Oh, I understand them; Mrs. Henry's the worst; oily!