'Can you promise to keep a little love for me all that time?' he asked with a constrained smile.
'You know me too well to fear.'
'I thought you seemed a little doubtful.'
His tone was not altogether that which makes banter pleasant between lovers. Marian looked at him fearfully. Was it possible for him in truth so to misunderstand her? He had never satisfied her heart's desire of infinite love; she never spoke with him but she was oppressed with the suspicion that his love was not as great as hers, and, worse still, that he did not wholly comprehend the self-surrender which she strove to make plain in every word.
'You don't say that seriously, Jasper?'
'But answer seriously.'
'How can you doubt that I would wait faithfully for you for years if it were necessary?'
'It mustn't be years, that's very certain. I think it preposterous for a man to hold a woman bound in that hopeless way.'
'But what question is there of holding me bound? Is love dependent on fixed engagements? Do you feel that, if we agreed to part, your love would be at once a thing of the past?'
'Why no, of course not.'
'Oh, but how coldly you speak, Jasper!'
She could not breathe a word which might be interpreted as fear lest the change of her circumstances should make a change in his feeling. Yet that was in her mind. The existence of such a fear meant, of course, that she did not entirely trust him, and viewed his character as something less than noble. Very seldom indeed is a woman free from such doubts, however absolute her love; and perhaps it is just as rare for a man to credit in his heart all the praises he speaks of his beloved. Passion is compatible with a great many of these imperfections of intellectual esteem. To see more clearly into Jasper's personality was, for Marian, to suffer the more intolerable dread lest she should lose him.
She went to his side. Her heart ached because, in her great misery, he had not fondled her, and intoxicated her senses with loving words.
'How can I make you feel how much I love you?' she murmured.
'You mustn't be so literal, dearest. Women are so desperately matter-of-fact; it comes out even in their love-talk.'
Marian was not without perception of the irony of such an opinion on Jasper's lips.
'I am content for you to think so,' she said. 'There is only one fact in my life of any importance, and I can never lose sight of it.'
'Well now, we are quite sure of each other. Tell me plainly, do you think me capable of forsaking you because you have perhaps lost your money?'
The question made her wince. If delicacy had held her tongue, it had no control of HIS.
'How can I answer that better,' she said, 'than by saying I love you?'
It was no answer, and Jasper, though obtuse compared with her, understood that it was none. But the emotion which had prompted his words was genuine enough. Her touch, the perfume of her passion, had their exalting effect upon him. He felt in all sincerity that to forsake her would be a baseness, revenged by the loss of such a wife.
'There's an uphill fight before me, that's all,' he said, 'instead of the pretty smooth course I have been looking forward to. But I don't fear it, Marian. I'm not the fellow to be beaten.
You shall be my wife, and you shall have as many luxuries as if you had brought me a fortune.'
'Luxuries! Oh, how childish you seem to think me!'
'Not a bit of it. Luxuries are a most important part of life. Ihad rather not live at all than never possess them. Let me give you a useful hint; if ever I seem to you to flag, just remind me of the difference between these lodgings and a richly furnished house. Just hint to me that So-and-so, the journalist, goes about in his carriage, and can give his wife a box at the theatre. Just ask me, casually, how I should like to run over to the Riviera when London fogs are thickest. You understand? That's the way to keep me at it like a steam-engine.'
'You are right. All those things enable one to live a better and fuller life. Oh, how cruel that I--that we are robbed in this way! You can have no idea how terrible a blow it was to me when Iread that letter this morning.'
She was on the point of confessing that she had swooned, but something restrained her.
'Your father can hardly be sorry,' said Jasper.
'I think he speaks more harshly than he feels. The worst was, that until he got your letter he had kept hoping that I would let him have the money for a new review.'
'Well, for the present I prefer to believe that the money isn't all lost. If the blackguards pay ten shillings in the pound you will get two thousand five hundred out of them, and that's something. But how do you stand? Will your position be that of an ordinary creditor?'
'I am so ignorant. I know nothing of such things.'
'But of course your interests will be properly looked after. Put yourself in communication with this Mr Holden. I'll have a look into the law on the subject. Let us hope as long as we can. By Jove! There's no other way of facing it.'
'No, indeed.'
'Mrs Reardon and the rest of them are safe enough, I suppose?'
'Oh, no doubt.'
'Confound them!--It grows upon one. One doesn't take in the whole of such a misfortune at once. We must hold on to the last rag of hope, and in the meantime I'll half work myself to death. Are you going to see the girls?'
'Not to-night. You must tell them.'
'Dora will cry her eyes out. Upon my word, Maud'll have to draw in her horns. I must frighten her into economy and hard work.'
He again lost himself in anxious reverie.
'Marian, couldn't you try your hand at fiction?'
She started, remembering that her father had put the same question so recently.
'I'm afraid I could do nothing worth doing.'
'That isn't exactly the question. Could you do anything that would sell? With very moderate success in fiction you might make three times as much as you ever will by magazine pot-boilers. Agirl like you. Oh, you might manage, I should think.'
'A girl like me?'