Quisanté | Page 4

an animal for him. Well, yes, he was a little weaselly
perhaps. But----" She glanced at Lady Richard as she paused, and then
appeared to think that she would say no more; she frowned slightly and
then smiled.
"I like his cheek!" exclaimed Fanny with a simplicity that had survived
the schoolroom.
Lady Richard screwed her small straight features into wrinkles of
disgust and a shrug seemed to run all over her little trim
smartly-gowned figure; no presumption could astonish her in Quisanté.
"Why in the world did you listen to him, May?" Fanny went on.
"He interested me. And every now and then he was objectionable in

rather an original way."
With another shrug, inspired this time by her friend's mental vagaries,
Lady Richard diverged to another point.
"And that was where you were all the time Weston Marchmont was
looking for you?" she asked.
May began to laugh. "Somehow I'm generally somewhere else when
Mr. Marchmont looks for me," she said. "It isn't deliberate, really; I like
him very much, but when he comes near me, some perverse fate seems
to set my legs moving in the opposite direction."
"Well, Alexander Quisanté's a perverse fate, if you like," said Lady
Richard.
"It's curious how there are people one's like that towards. You're very
fond of them, but it seems quite certain that you'll never get much
nearer to them. Is it fate? Or is it that in the end there's a--a solution of
sympathy, a break somewhere, so that you stop just short of finding
them absolutely satisfying?"
Neither of her friends answered her. Lady Richard did not deal in
speculations; Fanny preferred not to discuss, even indirectly, her sister's
feelings towards Marchmont; they bred in her a mixture of resentment
and relief too complicated for public reference. It was certainly true
enough that he and May got no nearer to one another; if the break
referred to existed somewhere, its effect was very plain; how could it
display itself more strikingly than in making the lady prefer Quisanté's
weaselly flirtation to the accomplished and enviable homage of Weston
Marchmont? And preferred it she had, for one hour of life at least.
Fanny felt the anger which we suffer when another shows indifference
towards what we should consider great good fortune.
But indifference was not truly May's attitude towards Marchmont.
Nobody, she honestly thought, could be indifferent to him, to his
handsomeness, his grace and refinement, the fine temper of his mind,
his indubitable superiority of intellect; in everything he was

immeasurably above the ordinary run of her acquaintance, the
well-groomed inconsiderables of whom she knew such a number.
Being accustomed to look this world in the face unblinkingly, she did
not hesitate to add that he possessed great wealth and the prospect of a
high career. He was all, and indeed rather more, than she, widowed
Lady Attlebridge's slenderly dowered daughter, had any reason to
expect. She wanted to expect no more, if possible really to regard this
opportunity as greater luck than she had a right to anticipate. The
dissatisfaction which she sought to explain by talking of a solution of
sympathy was very obstinate, but justice set the responsibility down to
her account, not to his; analysing her temperament, without excusing it,
she found a spirit of adventure and experiment--or should she say of
restlessness and levity?--which Marchmont did not minister to nor yet
assuage. The only pleasure that lay in this discovery came from the fact
that it was so opposed to the general idea about her. For it was her lot
to be exalted into a type of the splendid calm patrician maiden. In that
sort of vein her friends spoke of her when they were not very intimate,
in that sort of language she saw herself described in gushing paragraphs
that chronicled the doings of her class. Stately, gracious, even queenly,
were epithets which were not spared her; it would have been refreshing
to find some Diogenes of a journalist who would have called her, in
round set terms, discontented, mutinous, scornful of the ideal she
represented, a very hot-bed of the faults the beauty of whose absence
was declared in her dignified demeanour. Now what May looked, that
Fanny was; but poor Fanny, being slight of build, small in feature, and
gay in manner, got no credit for her exalted virtues and could not be
pressed into service as the type of them. For certainly types must look
typical. May's comfort in these circumstances was that Marchmont's
perfect breeding and instinctive avoidance of display, of absurdity,
even of betraying any heat of emotion, saved her from the usual
troubles which an unsatisfied lover entails on his mistress. He looked
for her no doubt, but with no greater visible perturbation than if she had