"Lydia," he said, trying to speak vehemently, but failing to shake
off the conventional address of which he had made a second nature,
"I have heard something that has filled me with inexpressible
dismay. Is it true?"
"The news has travelled fast," she said. "Yes; it is true." She
spoke composedly, and so kindly that he choked in trying to reply.
"Then, Lydia, you are the chief actor in a greater tragedy than I
have ever witnessed on the stage."
"It is strange, is it not?" she said, smiling at his effort to be
impressive.
"Strange! It is calamitous. I trust I may be allowed to say so. And
you sit there reading as calmly as though nothing had happened."
She handed him the book without a word.
"'Ivanhoe'!" he said. "A novel!"
"Yes. Do you remember once, before you knew me very well, telling me
that Scott's novels were the only ones that you liked to see in the
hands of ladies?"
"No doubt I did. But I cannot talk of literature just--"
"I am not leading you away from what you want to talk about. I was
about to tell you that I came upon 'Ivanhoe' by chance half an hour
ago, when I was searching--I confess it--for something very romantic
to read. Ivanhoe was a prize-fighter--the first half of the book is
a description of a prize-fight. I was wondering whether some
romancer of the twenty-fourth century will hunt out the exploits of
my husband, and present him to the world as a sort of English
nineteenth-century Cyd, with all the glory of antiquity upon his
deeds."
Lucian made a gesture of impatience. "I have never been able to
understand," he said, "how it is that a woman of your ability can
habitually dwell on perverse and absurd ideas. Oh, Lydia, is this to
be the end of all your great gifts and attainments? Forgive me if I
touch a painful chord; but this marriage seems to me so unnatural
that I must speak out. Your father made you one of the richest and
best-educated women in the world. Would he approve of what you are
about to do?"
"It almost seems to me that he educated me expressly to some such
end. Whom would you have me marry?"
"Doubtless few men are worthy of you, Lydia. But this man least of
all. Could you not marry a gentleman? If he were even an artist, a
poet, or a man of genius of any kind, I could bear to think of it;
for indeed I am not influenced by class prejudice in the matter. But
a--I will try to say nothing that you must not in justice admit to
be too obvious to be ignored--a man of the lower orders, pursuing a
calling which even the lower orders despise; illiterate, rough,
awaiting at this moment a disgraceful sentence at the hands of the
law! Is it possible that you have considered all these things?"