Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers

15. CHAPTER XV: THE WIDOW'S SUITORS (continued)

'There's no other foolish thing left, that you haven't done,' said Madeline, 'and therefore you are quite right to try that.'

'Oh, you think it's a foolish thing, do you?' said he. 'There's Lotte advising me to marry by all means. But on such a subject your opinion ought to be the best; you have experience to guide you.'

'Yes, I have,' said Madeline, with a sort of harsh sadness in her tone, which seemed to say--What is it to you if I am sad? I have never asked your sympathy.

Bertie was sorry when he saw that she was hurt by what he said, and he came and squatted on the floor close before her face to make his peace with her.

'Come, Mad, I was only joking; you know that. But in sober earnest, Lotte is advising me to marry. She wants me to marry Mrs Bold. She's a widow with lots of tin, a fine baby, a beautiful complexion, and the George and Dragon hotel up in High Street. By Jove, Lotte, if I marry her, I'll keep the public house myself--it's just the life that suits me.'

'What?' said Madeline, 'that vapid swarthy creature in the widow's cap, who looked as though her clothes had been stuck on her back with a pitchfork!' The signora never allowed any woman to be beautiful.

'Instead of being vapid,' said Lotte, 'I call her a very lovely woman. She was by far the loveliest woman in the rooms the other night; that is, excepting you, Madeline.'

Even the compliment did not soften the asperity of the maimed beauty. 'Every woman is charming according to Lotte,' she said; 'I never knew an eye with so little true appreciation. In the first place, what woman on earth could look well in such a thing as that she had on her head?'

'Of course she wears a widow's cap; but she'll put that off when Bertie marries her.'