Mrs. Geoffrey. Duchess
asks Mona, meditatively.
"Yes; I am that most despicable of all things, a third son."
"I have heard of it. A third son would be poor, of course, and – and worldly people would not think so much of him as of others. Is that so?"
She pauses. But for the absurdity of the thing, Mr. Rodney would swear there is hope in her tone.
"Your description is graphic," he answers, lightly, "if faintly unkind; but when is the truth civil? You are right. Younger sons, as a rule, are not run after. Mammas do not hanker after them, or give them their reserve smiles, or pull their skirts aside to make room for them upon small ottomans."
"That betrays the meanness of the world," says Mona, slowly and with indignation. "Has not Geoffrey just declared himself to be a younger son?"
"Does it? I was bred in a different belief. In my world the mighty do no wrong; and a third son is nowhere. He is shunted; handed on; if possible, scotched. The sun is not made for him, or the first waltz, or caviare, or the 'sweet shady side' of anything. In fact, he 'is the man of no account' with a vengeance!"
"What a shame!" says Mona, angrily. Then she changes her note, and says, with a soft, low, mocking laugh, "How I pity you!"
"Thanks. I shall try to believe you, though your mirth is somewhat out of place, and has a tendency towards heartlessness." (He is laughing too.) "Yet there have been instances," goes on Mr. Rodney, still smiling, while watching her intently, "when maiden aunts have taken a fancy to third sons, and have died leaving them lots of tin."
"Eh?" says Mona.
"Tin, – money," explains he.
"Oh, I dare say. Yes, sometimes: but – " she hesitates, and this time the expression of her face cannot be misunderstood: dejection betrays itself in every line – "but it is not so with you, is it? No aunt has left you anything?"
"No, – no aunt," returns Rodney, speaking the solemn truth, yet conveying a lie: "I have not been blessed with maiden aunts wallowing in coin."
"So I thought," exclaims Mona, with a cheerful nod, that under other circumstances should be aggravating, so full of content it is. "At first I fea – I thought you were rich, but afterwards I guessed it was your brothers' ground you were shooting over. And Bridget told me, too. She said you could not be well off, you had so many brothers. But I like you all the better for that," says Mona, in a tone that actually savors of protection, slipping her little brown hand through his arm in a kindly, friendly, lovable fashion.
"Do you?" says Rodney. He is strangely moved; he speaks quietly, but his heart is beating quickly, and Cupid's dart sinks deeper in its wound.
"Is your brother, Mr. Rodney, like you?" asks Mona presently.
He has never told her that his eldest brother is a baronet. Why he hardly knows, yet now he does not contradict her when she alludes to him as Mr. Rodney. Some inward feeling prevents him. Perhaps he understands instinctively that such knowledge will but widen the breach that already exists between him and the girl who now walks beside him with a happy smile upon her flower-like face.
"No; he is not like me," he says, abruptly: "he is a much better fellow. He is, besides, tall and rather lanky, with dark eyes and hair. He is like my father, they tell me; I am like my mother."
At this Mona turns her gaze secretly upon him. She studies his hair, his gray eyes, his irregular nose, – that ought to have known better, – and his handsome mouth, so resolute, yet so tender, that his fair moustache only half conceals. The world in general acknowledges Mr. Rodney to be a well-looking young man of ordinary merits, but in Mona's eyes he is something more than all this; and I believe the word "ordinary," as applied to him, would sound offensive in her ears.
"I think I should like your mother," she says, naively and very sweetly, lifting her eyes steadily to his. "She is handsome, of course; and is she good as she is beautiful?"
Flattery goes a long way with most men, but in this instance the subtle poison touches Mr. Rodney even more than it pleases him. He presses the hand that rests upon his arm an eighth of an inch nearer to his heart than it was before, if that be possible.
"My mother is a real good sort when you know her," he says, evasively; "but she's rather rough on strangers. However, she is always all there, you know, so far as manners go, and that."
Miss Mona looks puzzled.
"I don't think I understand you," she says, at length, gravely. "Where would the rest of her be, if she wasn't all in the same place?"
She says this in such perfect good faith that Mr. Rodney roars with laughter.
"Perhaps you may not know it," says he, "but you are simply perfection!"
"So Mr. Moore says," returns she, smiling.
Had she put out all her powers of invention with a view to routing him with slaughter, she could not have been more successful than she is with this small unpremeditated speech. Had a thunderbolt fallen at his feet, he could not have betrayed more thorough and complete discomfiture.
He drops her arm, and looks as though he is prepared to drop her acquaintance also, at a moment's notice.
"What has Mr. Moore to do with you?" he asks, haughtily. "Who is he, that he should so speak to you?"
"He is our landlord," says Mona, calmly, but with uplifted brows, stopping short in the middle of the road to regard him with astonishment.
"And thinks you perfection?" in an impossible tone, losing both his head and his temper completely. "He is rich, I suppose; why don't you marry him?"
Mona turns pale.
"To ask the question is a rudeness," she says, steadily, though her heart is cold and hurt. "Yet I will answer you. In our country, and in our class," with an amount of inborn pride impossible to translate, "we do not marry a man because he is 'rich,' or in other words, sell ourselves for gold."
Having said this, she turns her back upon him contemptuously, and walks towards her home.
He follows her, full of remorse and contrition. Her glance, even more than her words, has covered him with shame, and cured him of his want of generosity.
"Forgive me, Mona," he says, with deep entreaty. "I confess my fault. How could I speak to you as I did! I implore your pardon. Great sinner as I am, surely I shall not knock for forgiveness at your sweet heart in vain!"
"Do not ever speak to me like that again," says Mona, turning upon him eyes humid with disappointment, yet free from wrath of any kind. "As for Mr. Moore," with a curl of her short upper lip that it does him good to see, and a quick frown, "why, he is as old as the hills, and as fat as Tichborne, and he hasn't got a single hair on his head!"
But that Mr. Rodney is still oppressed with the fear that he has mortally offended her, he could have laughed out loud at this childish speech; but anxiety helps him to restrain his mirth. Nevertheless he feels an unholy joy as he thinks on Mr. Moore's bald pate, his "too, too solid flesh," and his "many days."
"Yet he dares to admire you?" is what he does say, after a decided pause.
"Sure they all admire me," says Miss Mona, with an exasperating smile, meant to wither.
But Mr. Rodney is determined to "have it out with her," as he himself would say, before consenting to fade away out of her sight.
"But he wants to marry you. I know he does. Tell me the truth about that," he says, with flattering vehemence.
"Certainly I shall not. It would be very mean, and I wonder at you to ask the question," says Mona, with a great show of virtuous indignation. "Besides," mischievously, "if you know, there is no necessity to tell you anything."
"Yet answer me," persists he, very earnestly.
"I can't," says Mona; "it would be very unfair; and besides," petulantly, "it is all too absurd. Why, if Mr. Moore were to ask me to marry him ten thousand times again, I should never say anything but 'no.'"
Unconsciously she has betrayed herself. He hears the word "again" with a strange sinking of the heart. Others, then, are desirous of claiming