Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/646

594 that these years of absence had wrought a noticeable change in the man before her. He had aged. Hard living and hard travelling had left their marks. But, like Lady Tranmore, she also perceived another difference. The eyes bent upon her were indeed, as before, the eyes of a man self-centred, self-absorbed. There was no chivalrous softness in them, no consideration. The man who owned them used them entirely for his own purposes; they betrayed none of that changing instinctive relation towards the human being—any human being—within their range, which makes the charm of so many faces. But they were sadder, more sombre, more restless; they thrilled her more than they had already thrilled her once, in the first moment of her youth.

What was he going to say? From the moment of his first letter to her from Japan, Mary had perfectly understood that he had some fresh purpose in his mind. She was not anxious, however, to precipitate the moment of explanation. She was no longer the young girl whose equilibrium is upset by the mere approach of the man who interests her. Moreover, there was a past between herself and Cliffe, the memory of which might indeed point her to caution. Did he now, after all, want to marry her?—because she was rich, and he was comparatively poor, and could only secure an English career at the cost of a well-stored wife? Well,—all that should be thought over, by herself no less than by him. Meanwhile her vanity glowed within her as she thus held him there alone,—to the discomfiture of other women more beautiful and more highly placed than herself; as she remembered his letters in her desk at home, and the secrets she imagined him to have told her. Then again she felt a rush of sudden disquiet, caused by this new aspect,—wavering and remote—as though some hidden grief emerged and vanished. He had the haggard air of a man who scarcely sleeps. All that she had ever heard of the French affair rushed through her mind, stirring there an angry curiosity.

These impressions took, however, but a few minutes, while they exchanged some conventionalities. Then Cliffe said, scrutinizing the face and form beside him with that intentness which from him was more generally taken as compliment than offence:

"Will you excuse the remark?—there are no women who keep their first freshness like Englishwomen!"

"Thank you! If we feel fresh, I suppose we look it. As for you—you clearly want a rest!"

"No time to think of it, then; I have come home to fight—all I know; to make myself as odious as possible."

Mary laughed.

"You have been doing that so long. Why not try the opposite?"

Cliffe looked at her sharply.

"You think I have made a failure of it?"

"Not at all! You have made everybody furiously uncomfortable—and you see how civil even the Radical papers are to you."

"Yes. What fools!" said Cliffe, shortly. "They'll soon leave that off. Just now I'm a stick to beat the government with. But you don't believe I shall carry my point?"

The point concerned a particular detail in a pending negotiation with the United States. Cliffe had been denouncing the government for what he conceived to be their coming retreat before American demands. America, according to him, had been playing the bully; and English interests were being betrayed.

Mary considered.

"I think you will have to change your tactics."

"Dictate them, then!"

He bent forward, with that sudden change of manner, that courteous sweetness of tone and gesture, which few women could resist. Mary's heart, seasoned though it was, felt a charming flutter. She talked, and she talked well. She had no independence of mind, and very little real knowledge; but she had an excellent reporter's ability; she knew what to remember and how to tell it. Cliffe listened to her attentively, acknowledging to himself the while that she had certainly gained. She was a far more definite personality than she had been when he last knew her; and her self-possession, her trained manner, rested him. Thank Heaven, she was not a clever woman!—how he detested the breed. But she was