‘Can you not?’

‘No, Mr Tregear.  Think how long I have known these other people.’

‘But just now you said that he was your enemy.’

’I did say so; but as I have unsaid it since, you as a gentleman will not remember my words.  At any rate I cannot help you in this.’

‘I shall write to her.’

’It can be nothing to me.  If you write she will show your letter either to her father or to Lady Cantrip.’

‘But she will read it first.’

’I cannot tell you how that may be.  In fact I am the very last person in the world to whom you should come for assistance in this matter.  If I gave any assistance to anybody I should be bound to give it to the Duke.’

‘I cannot understand that, Mrs Finn.’

’Nor can I explain it, but it would be so.  I shall always be very glad to see you, and I do feel that we ought to be friends,—­ because I took such a liberty with you.  But in this matter I cannot help you.’

When she said this he had to take his leave.  It was impossible that he should further press his case upon her, though he would have been very glad to extract from her some kindly word.  It is such a help in a difficulty to have somebody who will express even a hope that the difficulty is perhaps not invincible!  He had no one to comfort him in this matter.  There was one dear friend,—­as a friend dearer than any other,—­to whom he might go, and who would after some fashion bid him prosper.  Mabel would encourage him.  She had said that she would do so.  But in making that promise she had told him that Romeo would not have spoken of his love for Juliet to Rosaline, whom he had loved before he saw Juliet.  No doubt she had gone on to tell him that he might come to her and talk freely of his love for Lady Mary,—­but after what had been said before he felt that he could not do so without leaving a sting behind.  When a man’s heart goes well with him,—­so well as to be in some degree oppressive to him even by its prosperity,—­when the young lady has jumped into his arms, and the father and the mother have been quite willing, then he wants no confidant.  He does not care to speak very much off the matter which among his friends is apt to become a subject for raillery.  When you call a man Benedict he does not come to you with ecstatic descriptions of the beauty and the wit of his Beatrice.  But no one was likely to call him Benedict in reference to Lady Mary.

In spite of his manner, in spite of his apparent self-sufficiency, this man was very soft within.  Less than two years back he had been willing to sacrifice all the world for his cousin Mabel, and his cousin Mabel had told him that he was wrong.  ’It does not pay to sacrifice the world for love.’  So cousin Mabel had said, and had added something as to its being necessary that she should marry a rich man, and expedient that he should marry a rich woman.  He had thought much about it, and had declared to himself