The Duke's Children. Anthony Trollope

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СКАЧАТЬ himself from contempt—from that sort of contempt which might be supposed to await a young nobleman who had painted scarlet the residence of the Head of his college—by the fact of his having chosen such a friend. The Duke was essentially a just man; and though, at the very moment in which the request was made, his heart was half crushed by his son's apostasy, he gave the permission asked.

      "You know Mrs. Finn?" Tregear said to his friend one morning at breakfast.

      "I remember her all my life. She used to be a great deal with my grandfather. I believe he left her a lot of diamonds and money, and that she wouldn't have them. I don't know whether the diamonds are not locked up somewhere now, so that she can take them when she pleases."

      "What a singular woman!"

      "It was odd; but she had some fad about it. What makes you ask about Mrs. Finn?"

      "She wants me to go and see her."

      "What about?"

      "I think I have heard your mother speak of her as though she loved her dearly," said Tregear.

      "I don't know about loving her dearly. They were intimate, and Mrs. Finn used to be with her very much when she was in the country. She was at Matching just now, when my poor mother died. Why does she want to see you?"

      "She has written to me from Matching. She wants to see me—"

      "Well?"

      "To tell you the truth, I do not know what she has to say to me; though I can guess."

      "What do you guess?"

      "It is something about your sister."

      "You will have to give that up, Tregear."

      "I think not."

      "Yes, you will; my father will never stand it."

      "I don't know what there is to stand. I am not noble, nor am I rich; but I am as good a gentleman as he is."

      "My dear fellow," said the young lord, "you know very well what I think about all that. A fellow is not any better to me because he has got a title, nor yet because he owns half a county. But men have their ideas and feelings about it. My father is a rich man, and of course he'll want his daughter to marry a rich man. My father is noble, and he'll want his daughter to marry a nobleman. You can't very well marry Mary without his permission, and therefore you had better let it alone."

      "I haven't even asked his permission as yet."

      "Even my mother was afraid to speak to him about it, and I never knew her to be afraid to say anything else to him."

      "I shall not be afraid," said Tregear, looking grimly.

      "I should. That's the difference between us."

      "He can't very well eat me."

      "Nor even bite you;—nor will he abuse you. But he can look at you, and he can say a word or two which you will find it very hard to bear. My governor is the quietest man I know, but he has a way of making himself disagreeable when he wishes, that I never saw equalled."

      "At any rate, I had better go and see your Mrs. Finn." Then Tregear wrote a line to Mrs. Finn, and made his appointment.

CHAPTER IV

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Park Lane

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      From the beginning of the affair Tregear had found the necessity of bolstering himself up inwardly in his great attempt by mottoes, proverbs, and instigations to courage addressed to himself. "None but the brave deserve the fair." "De l'audace, et encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace." He was a man naturally of good heart in such matters, who was not afraid of his brother-men, nor yet of women, his sisters. But in this affair he knew very much persistence would be required of him, and that even with such persistence he might probably fail, unless he should find a more than ordinary constancy in the girl. That the Duke could not eat him, indeed that nobody could eat him as long as he carried himself as an honest man and a gentleman, was to him an inward assurance on which he leaned much. And yet he was conscious, almost with a feeling of shame, that in Italy he had not spoken to the Duke about his daughter because he was afraid lest the Duke might eat him. In such an affair he should have been careful from the first to keep his own hands thoroughly clean. Had it not been his duty as a gentleman to communicate with the father, if not before he gained the girl's heart, at any rate as soon as he knew he had done so? He had left Italy thinking that he would certainly meet the Duchess and her daughter in London, and that then he might go to the Duke as though this love of his had arisen from the sweetness of those meetings in London. But all these ideas had been dissipated by the great misfortune of the death of Lady Mary's mother. From all this he was driven to acknowledge to himself that his silence in Italy had been wrong, that he had been weak in allowing himself to be guided by the counsel of the Duchess, and that he had already armed the Duke with one strong argument against him.

      He did not doubt but that Mrs. Finn would be opposed to him. Of course he could not doubt but that all the world would now be opposed to him—except the girl herself. He would find no other friend so generous, so romantic, so unworldly as the Duchess had been. It was clear to him that Lady Mary had told the story of her engagement to Mrs. Finn, and that Mrs. Finn had not as yet told it to the Duke. From this he was justified in regarding Mrs. Finn as the girl's friend. The request made was that he should at once do something which Mrs. Finn was to suggest. He could hardly have been so requested, and that in terms of such warm affection, had it been Mrs. Finn's intention to ask him to desist altogether from his courtship. This woman was regarded by Lady Mary as her mother's dearest friend. It was therefore incumbent on him now to induce her to believe in him as the Duchess had believed.

      He knocked at the door of Mrs. Finn's little house in Park Lane a few minutes before the time appointed, and found himself alone when he was shown into the drawing-room. He had heard much of this lady though he had never seen her, and had heard much also of her husband. There had been a kind of mystery about her. People did not quite understand how it was that she had been so intimate with the Duchess, nor why the late Duke had left to her an enormous legacy, which as yet had never been claimed. There was supposed, too, to have been something especially romantic in her marriage with her present husband. It was believed also that she was very rich. The rumours of all these things together had made her a person of note, and Tregear, when he found himself alone in the drawing-room, looked round about him as though a special interest was to be attached to the belongings of such a woman. It was a pretty room, somewhat dark, because the curtains were almost closed across the windows, but furnished with a pretty taste, and now, in these early April days, filled with flowers.

      "I have to apologise, Mr. Tregear, for keeping you waiting," she said as she entered the room.

      "I fear I was before my time."

      "I know that I am after mine—a few minutes," said the lady.

      He told himself that though she was not a young woman, yet she was attractive. She was dark, and still wore her black hair in curls, such as are now seldom seen with ladies. Perhaps the reduced СКАЧАТЬ