'So like as to be almost a caricature?--Mr Twemlow, it is impossible to tell you what the struggle in my mind has been, before I could bring myself to speak to you as I do now. It is only in the conviction that I may trust you never to betray me, that Ican proceed. Sincerely promise me that you never will betray my confidence--that you will respect it, even though you may no longer respect me,--and I shall be as satisfied as if you had sworn it.'
'Madam, on the honour of a poor gentleman--'
'Thank you. I can desire no more. Mr Twemlow, I implore you to save that child!'
'That child?'
'Georgiana. She will be sacrificed. She will be inveigled and married to that connexion of yours. It is a partnership affair, a money-speculation. She has no strength of will or character to help herself and she is on the brink of being sold into wretchedness for life.'
'Amazing! But what can I do to prevent it?' demands Twemlow, shocked and bewildered to the last degree.
'Here is another portrait. And not good, is it?'
Aghast at the light manner of her throwing her head back to look at it critically, Twemlow still dimly perceives the expediency of throwing his own head back, and does so. Though he no more sees the portrait than if it were in China.
'Decidedly not good,' says Mrs Lammle. 'Stiff and exaggerated!'
'And ex--' But Twemlow, in his demolished state, cannot command the word, and trails off into '--actly so.'
'Mr Twemlow, your word will have weight with her pompous, self-blinded father. You know how much he makes of your family. Lose no time. Warn him.'
'But warn him against whom?'
'Against me.'
By great good fortune Twemlow receives a stimulant at this critical instant. The stimulant is Lammle's voice.
'Sophronia, my dear, what portraits are you showing Twemlow?'
'Public characters, Alfred.'
'Show him the last of me.'
'Yes, Alfred.'
She puts the book down, takes another book up, turns the leaves, and presents the portrait to Twemlow.
'That is the last of Mr Lammle. Do you think it good?--Warn her father against me. I deserve it, for I have been in the scheme from the first. It is my husband's scheme, your connexion's, and mine.
I tell you this, only to show you the necessity of the poor little foolish affectionate creature's being befriended and rescued. You will not repeat this to her father. You will spare me so far, and spare my husband. For, though this celebration of to-day is all a mockery, he is my husband, and we must live.--Do you think it like?'
Twemlow, in a stunned condition, feigns to compare the portrait in his hand with the original looking towards him from his Mephistophelean corner.
'Very well indeed!' are at length the words which Twemlow with great difficulty extracts from himself.
'I am glad you think so. On the whole, I myself consider it the best. The others are so dark. Now here, for instance, is another of Mr Lammle--'
'But I don't understand; I don't see my way,' Twemlow stammers, as he falters over the book with his glass at his eye. 'How warn her father, and not tell him? Tell him how much? Tell him how little? I--I--am getting lost.'
'Tell him I am a match-maker; tell him I am an artful and designing woman; tell him you are sure his daughter is best out of my house and my company. Tell him any such things of me; they will all be true. You know what a puffed-up man he is, and how easily you can cause his vanity to take the alarm. Tell him as much as will give him the alarm and make him careful of her, and spare me the rest. Mr Twemlow, I feel my sudden degradation in your eyes; familiar as I am with my degradation in my own eyes, Ikeenly feel the change that must have come upon me in yours, in these last few moments. But I trust to your good faith with me as implicitly as when I began. If you knew how often I have tried to speak to you to-day, you would almost pity me. I want no new promise from you on my own account, for I am satisfied, and Ialways shall be satisfied, with the promise you have given me. Ican venture to say no more, for I see that I am watched. If you would set my mind at rest with the assurance that you will interpose with the father and save this harmless girl, close that book before you return it to me, and I shall know what you mean, and deeply thank you in my heart.--Alfred, Mr Twemlow thinks the last one the best, and quite agrees with you and me.'
Alfred advances. The groups break up. Lady Tippins rises to go, and Mrs Veneering follows her leader. For the moment, Mrs Lammle does not turn to them, but remains looking at Twemlow looking at Alfred's portrait through his eyeglass. The moment past, Twemlow drops his eyeglass at its ribbon's length, rises, and closes the book with an emphasis which makes that fragile nursling of the fairies, Tippins, start.
Then good-bye and good-bye, and charming occasion worthy of the Golden Age, and more about the flitch of bacon, and the like of that; and Twemlow goes staggering across Piccadilly with his hand to his forehead, and is nearly run down by a flushed lettercart, and at last drops safe in his easy-chair, innocent good gentleman, with his hand to his forehead still, and his head in a whirl.