ity which craved solace, two foolish words, and a chain was forged in a moment, which honour forbade to be broken ever and ever again! But did honour absolutely forbid it? that was the question. Why should such a foolish, such an utterly unreasonable bond, made in a moment of aberration, of heedlessness, fraught with such incalculable consequences, for him, for her, for all of them – why should it, she asked herself, be regarded as sacred? Her brother, she could see well enough, was far from being satisfied with the wisdom of his own proceedings. If for a while, for a few moments, it had seemed to him a sort of necessity – a spirited rejoinder upon his part to the shabby trick which had been played upon him by Fortune soberer reflection had convinced him that it was not perhaps such a very brilliant repartee after all. He shrank palpably from announcing his engagement – from facing the comments which, tacitly, at all events, it would have been certain to have been received – and had even exacted a promise from Madame Facchino that for the present she would refrain from publicly proclaiming it. Should he decide to relinquish this ridiculous engagement, and should his sister support him in so doing, who could seriously gainsay them? Madame Facchino, it is true, might rave and storm, might declare herself the worst used of women, but what serious injury would that do them? The inappropriateness was too manifest, too obvious – it flew to meet the eyes. "What sort of a wife was this for a Mowbray – this ugly, grimacing, little, green-eyed woman, with her bourgeoise traditions, her Bohemian manners, her hundred and one shifts to get on, and to make ends meet?
There was no harm in her – Lady Frances was anxious to be just – so far as she could see or learn there was nothing against her excepting her intense commonness. From the ends of her fingertips to the very bottom of her soul she was radically and incurably common – in her tastes, in her aspirations, in her very good-nature. A little, ugly, flippant, jocose, good-natured vulgarian! And this was the woman that Hal had engaged himself to marry! No; it could not, should not be. She herself would face the matter out; she would have the courage of her opinions, take the helm in hand, and bear the whole weight of the responsibility, and, if need be, of the blame too, as she had done a hundred times before. What all her life long had she done but put herself in the breach? and when had she ever had a better reason for doing so than now? And then like a ghost, a thing of the night, impalpable, intangible, arose a pale spectre – the spectre of honour, her honour, his honour. His word was pledged – as surely, as irrevocably pledged as though this woman had been the youngest, most beautiful, tenderest of her sex, – perhaps more so, seeing that the less greater the temptation, the greater obviously the obligation to abide by his spoken word, or if not spoken even, then implied at any rate, and accepted. Women are not popularly supposed to have any very exalted standard of honour in such matters; but if so, then in this respect, as in most others, Lady Frances differed from the great majority of her sex. With her it was a religion, a fetish to which she would cheerfully have sacrificed herself and any one belonging to her. Better anything else, better a hundred times that she should be miserable, better
