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I had forgotten all about the creature, dearest; but there he had been lurking, ready to pounce. And what bad luck that he should know Ellaline's guardian, wasn't it? At first I thought maybe he really had had business at the Gare de Lyon, and that I'd partly misjudged him.
Some things are too strange not to be true; and I suppose this infatuation of Ellaline's, if it exists, is one of them. And it must exist. There can be no doubt of it, since Mrs. Senter has it from the boy who apparently has it from the girl. What to make of it, however, that she told me only about ten days ago, she didn't like him? Yet I am forgetting.
But do you want to marry Dick Burden, some day?" If he'd put it differently I might have hesitated what to answer, for I am afraid of Dick, there's no use denying it of course, mostly on Ellaline's account, but a little on my own too, because I'm a coward, and don't want to be disgraced.
Not that his coming would matter particularly if it weren't for complications, but there are several, the most formidable of which is a Young Man. The Young Man is a French young man, and his name is Honoré du Guesclin. She met him at Madame de Blanchemain's you remember the Madame de Blanchemain who was Ellaline's dead mother's most intimate friend, and who lives at St. Cloud?
I told him so, and he said it was only because I was so unkind to him, and he was determined I shouldn't "chuck" him. He is hateful! It's too horrid to be obliged to obey Dick Burden's orders, just for Ellaline's sake, when if it weren't for her I could not only tell him what I think of him, but have him sent away in disgrace.
The sight of it there was a blow; but I persuaded myself I might be mistaken; that it wasn't the same ring, but another, almost a duplicate. I went in and asked to look at it. The shopman mentioned that it was something quite unusually good, and had "only come in" that afternoon. Inside I found the date which I had had engraved on the ring; the date of Ellaline's birthday.
It's a good thing, Pat, that you didn't get your youthful way, and annex Emily, because you have, or had, a "strong weakness" for ruins, and she doesn't appreciate them in any form. The difference between her expression and Ellaline's while gazing at what is left of Glastonbury's glory was a study. Emily's bored, yet conscientiously desiring to be interested; the girl's rapt, radiant.
An ancestress of yours in the Revolution ran up the steps of the guillotine laughing and kissing her hands to the friends she left in the tumbril, and I could have been almost half as brave if by so doing I might have avoided this dreadful abandoning of Ellaline's interests, trusted to me. But what can you do between two evils? Isn't it a law of nature, or something, to choose the lesser?
I had a dim recollection of chestnut-brown hair, falling around a tiny face shaped like Ellaline's; "heart-shape" we used to call it, Emily and I, when we were both under our little French cousin's thumb, in the oldest days of all, before even Emily began to find her out. I wonder if a child sheds its first hair, like its first teeth?
Once she'd got away with him, and had had any kind of hole-in-the-corner wedding, Honoré was of opinion that even the most abandoned Dragon would be thankful to sanction a marriage according to French law; so it could all be done over again properly in France. I suppose this appealed immensely to Ellaline's love of intrigue and kittenish tricksiness generally.
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