it might rain when I got there after all! My trouble nobody knows.
Nobody knows a thing!

The night before my departure, Miss Pollingray did me the honour to
accompany me up to my bedroom. She spoke to me searchingly about
Charles; but she did not demand compromising answers. She is not in
favour of early marriages, so she merely wishes to know the footing upon
which we stand: that of friends. I assured her we were simply friends.
'It is the firmest basis of an attachment,' she said; and I did not look
hurried.

But I gained my end. I led her to talk of the beautiful Marquise. This
is the tale. Mr. Pollingray, when a very young man, and comparatively
poor, went over to France with good introductions, and there saw and fell
in love with Louise de Riverolles. She reciprocated his passion. If he
would have consented to abjure his religion and worship with her, Madame
de Riverolles, her mother, would have listened to her entreaties. But
Gilbert was firm. Mr. Pollingray, I mean, refused to abandon his faith.
Her mother, consequently, did not interfere, and Monsieur de Riverolles,
her father, gave her to the Marquis de Marzardouin, a roue young
nobleman, immensely rich, and shockingly dissipated. And she married
him. No, I cannot understand French girls. Do as I will, it is quite
incomprehensible to me how Louise, loving another, could suffer herself
to be decked out in bridal finery and go to the altar and take the
marriage oaths. Not if perdition had threatened would I have submitted.
I have a feeling that Mr. Pollingray should have shown at least one
year's resentment at such conduct; and yet I admire him for his immediate
generous forgiveness of her. It was fatherly. She was married at
sixteen. His forgiveness was the fruit of his few years' seniority,
said Miss Pollingray, whose opinion of the Marquise I cannot arrive at.