the town mouse and the country mouse,—as old as the hills. Mice may be civil for a while, and compliment each other; but when they come to speak their minds freely, each likes his own life best.” She said nothing more at the moment, and the three sat down to their small dinner-table. It was astonishing to Alice that he should be able to talk in this way, to hint at such things, to allude to their former hopes and present condition, without a quiver in his voice, or, as far as she could perceive, without any feeling in his heart.
“Alice,” said her father, “I can’t compliment your cook upon her soup.”
“You don’t encourage her, papa, by eating it often enough. And then you only told me at two o’clock to-day.”
“If a cook can’t make soup between two and seven, she can’t make it in a week.”
“I hope Mr Grey will excuse it,” said Alice.
“Isn’t it good?” said he. “I won’t say that it is, because I should be pretending to have an opinion; but I should not have found out anything against it of myself.”
“Where do you dine usually, now you are in London?” Mr Vavasor asked.
“At the old club, at the corner of Suffolk Street. It’s the oldest club in London, I believe. I never belonged to any other, and therefore can’t compare them; but I can’t imagine anything much nicer.”
“They give you better soup than ours?” said Alice.
“You’ve an excellent cook,” said Mr Vavasor, with great gravity; “one of the best second-class cooks in London. We were very nearly getting him, but you nicked him just in time. I know him well.”
“It’s a great deal more than I do, or hope to do. There’s another branch of public life for which I’m quite unfitted. I’d as soon be called on to choose a Prime Minister for the country, as I would a cook for a club.”
“Of course you would,” said Mr Vavasor. “There may be as many as a dozen cooks about London to be looked up, but there are never more than two possible Prime Ministers about. And as one of them must be going out when the other is coming in, I don’t see that there can be any difficulty. Moreover, now-a-days, people do their politics for themselves, but they expect to have their dinners cooked for them.”
The little dinner went on quietly and very easily. Mr Vavasor found fault with nearly everything. But as, on this occasion, the meat and the drink, with the manner of the eating and drinking, did not constitute the difficulty, Alice was indifferent to her father’s censures. The thing needed was that she and Mr Grey should be able to sit together at the same table without apparent consciousness of their former ties. Alice felt that she was succeeding indifferently well while she was putting in little mock defences for the cook. And as for John Grey, he succeeded so well that his success almost made Alice angry with him. It required no effort with him at all to be successful in this matter. “If he can forget all that has passed, so much the better,” said Alice to herself when she got up into the drawing-room. Then she sat herself down on the sofa, and cried. Oh! what had she not lost! Had any woman ever been so mad, so reckless, so heartless as she had been! And she had done it, knowing that she loved him! She cried bitterly, and then went away to wash her eyes, that she might be ready to give him his coffee when he should come upstairs.
“She does not look well,” said Grey as soon as she had left the room.
“Well;—no: how can she look well after what she has gone through? I sometimes think, that of all the people I ever knew, she has been the most foolish. But, of course, it is not for me to say anything against my own child; and, of all people, not to you.”
“Nothing that you could say against her would make any difference to me. I sometimes fancy that I know her better than you do.”
“And you think that she’ll still come round again?”
“I cannot say that I think so. No one can venture to say whether or not such wounds as hers may be cured. There are hearts and bodies so organized, that in them severe wounds are incurable, whereas in others no injury seems to be fatal. But I can say that if she be not cured it shall not be from want of perseverance on my part.”
“Upon my word, Grey, I don’t know how to thank you enough. I don’t, indeed.”
“It doesn’t seem to me to be a case for thanking.”
“Of course it isn’t. I know that well enough. And in the ordinary way of the world no father would think of thanking a man for wanting to marry his daughter. But things have come to such a pass with us, that, by George! I don’t feel like any other father. I don’t mind saying anything to you, you know. That claret isn’t very good, but you might as well take another glass.”
“Thank you, I will. I should have said that that was rather good wine, now.”
“It’s not just the thing. What’s the use of my having good wine here, when nobody comes to drink it? But, as I was saying about Alice, of course I’ve felt all this thing very much. I feel as though I were responsible, and yet what could I do? She’s her own mistress through it all. When she told me she was going to marry that horrible miscreant, my nephew, what could I do?”
“That’s over now, and we need not talk about it.”
“It’s very kind of you to say so,—very. I believe she’s a good girl. I do, indeed, in spite of it all.”
“I’ve no doubt of her being what you call a good girl,—none in the least. What she has done to me does not impair her goodness. I don’t think you have ever understood how much all this has been a matter of conscience with her.”
“Conscience!” said the angry father. “I hate such conscience. I like the conscience that makes a girl keep her word, and not bring disgrace upon those she belongs to.”
“I shall not think that I am disgraced,” said Grey, quietly, “if she will come and be my wife. She has meant to do right, and has endeavoured to take care of the happiness of other people rather than her own.”
“She has taken very little care of mine,” said Mr Vavasor.
“I shall not be at all afraid to trust mine to her,—if she will let me do so. But she has been wounded sorely, and it must take time.”
“And, in the meantime, what are we to do when she tells us that Mr George Vavasor wants another remittance? Two thousand pounds a quarter comes heavy, you know!”
“Let us hope that he has had enough.”
“Enough! Did such a man ever have enough?”
“Let us hope, then, that she thinks he has had enough. Come;—may I go upstairs?”
“Oh, yes. I’ll follow you. She’ll think that I mean something if I leave you together.”
From all this it will be seen that Alice’s father and her lover still stood together on confidential terms. Not easily had Mr Vavasor brought himself to speak of his daughter to John Grey, in such language as he had now used; but he had been forced by adverse circumstances to pass the Rubicon of parental delicacy; he had been driven to tell his wished-for son-in-law that he did wish to have him as a son-in-law; he had been compelled to lay aside those little airs of reserve
