Der Praefekt

Eleanor, about to beat
    a retreat in her sudden dismay.
     
    “He’s out now, and will be for the next two hours,” said the other;
    “he’s with that horrid Finney; he only came to see him, and he returns
    by the mail train tonight.”
     
    Returns by the mail train tonight, thought Eleanor to herself, as she
    strove to screw up her courage;—away again tonight;—then it must be
    now or never; and she again sat down, having risen to go.
     
    She wished the ordeal could have been postponed: she had fully made
    up her mind to do the deed, but she had not made up her mind to do it
    this very day; and now she felt ill at ease, astray, and in
    Schwierigkeiten.
     
    “Mary,” she began, “I must see your brother before he goes back.”
     
    “Oh yes, of course,” said the other; “I know he’ll be delighted to see
    you;” and she tried to treat it as a matter of course, but she was not
    the less surprised; for Mary and Eleanor had daily talked over John
    Bold and his conduct, and his love, and Mary would insist on calling
    Eleanor her sister, and would scold her for not calling Bold by his
    Christian name; and Eleanor would half confess her love, but like a
    modest maiden would protest against such familiarities even with the
    name of her lover; and so they talked hour after hour, and Mary Bold,
    who was much the elder, looked forward with happy confidence to the
    day when Eleanor would not be ashamed to call her her sister. Sie
    was, however, fully sure that just at present Eleanor would be much
    more likely to avoid her brother than to seek him.
     
    “Mary, I must see your brother, now, to-day, and beg from him a great
    favour;” and she spoke with a solemn air, not at all usual to her;
    and then she went on, and opened to her friend all her plan, her
    well-weighed scheme for saving her father from a sorrow which would,
    she said, if it lasted, bring him to his grave.  “But, Mary,” she
    continued, “you must now, you know, cease any joking about me and Mr
    Bold; you must now say no more about that; I am not ashamed to beg
    this favour from your brother, but when I have done so, there can
    never be anything further between us;” and this she said with a staid
    and solemn air, quite worthy of Jephthah’s daughter or of Iphigenia
    entweder.
     
    It was quite clear that Mary Bold did not follow the argument. Dass
    Eleanor Harding should appeal, on behalf of her father, to Bold’s
    better feelings seemed to Mary quite natural; it seemed quite natural
    that he should relent, overcome by such filial tears, and by so much
    beauty; but, to her thinking, it was at any rate equally natural, that
    having relented, John should put his arm round his mistress’s waist,
    and say: “Now having settled that, let us be man and wife, and all
    will end happily!”  Why his good nature should not be rewarded, when
    such reward would operate to the disadvantage of none, Mary, who had
    more sense than romance, could not understand; and she said as much.
     
    Eleanor, however, was firm, and made quite an eloquent speech to
    support her own view of the question: she could not condescend, she
    said, to ask such a favour on any other terms than those proposed.
    Mary might, perhaps, think her high-flown, but she had her own ideas,
    and she could not submit to sacrifice her self-respect.
     
    “But I am sure you love him;—don’t you?” pleaded Mary; “and I am sure
    he loves you better than anything in the world.”
     

Eleanor was going to make another speech, but a tear came to each eye,
    and she could not; so she pretended to blow her nose, and walked to
    the window, and made a little inward call on her own courage, and
    finding herself somewhat sustained, said sententiously: “Mary, this
    is nonsense.”
     
    “But you do love him,” said Mary, who had followed her friend to the
    window, and now spoke with her arms close wound round the other’s
    Taille. “You do love him with all your heart,—you know you do; I defy
    you to deny it.”
     
    “I—” commenced Eleanor, turning sharply round to refute the charge;
    but the intended falsehood stuck in her throat, and never came to
    Äußerung. She could not deny her love, so she took plentifully
    to tears, and leant upon her friend’s bosom and sobbed there, and
    protested that, love or no love, it would make no difference in her
    resolve, and called Mary, a thousand times, the most cruel of girls,
    and swore her to secrecy by a hundred oaths, and ended