“Miss Bray expects an enclosure perhaps,” said Nicholas, speaking very distinctly, and with an emphasis she could scarcely misunderstand. “My employer is absent from England, or I should have brought a letter with me. I hope she will give me time—a little time. I ask a very little time.”
“If that is all you come about, sir,” said Mr. Bray, “you may make yourself easy on that head. Madeline, my dear, I didn’t know this person was in your debt?”
“A—a trifle, I believe,” returned Madeline, faintly.
“I suppose you think now,” said Bray, wheeling his chair round and confronting Nicholas, “that, but for such pitiful sums as you bring here, because my daughter has chosen to employ her time as she has, we should starve?”
“I have not thought about it,” returned Nicholas.
“You have not thought about it!” sneered the invalid. “You know you have thought about it, and have thought that, and think so every time you come here. Do you suppose, young man, that I don’t know what little purse-proud tradesmen are, when, through some fortunate circumstances, they get the upper hand for a brief day—or think they get the upper hand—of a gentleman?”
“My business,” said Nicholas respectfully, “is with a lady.”
“With a gentleman’s daughter, sir,” returned the sick man, “and the pettifogging spirit is the same. But perhaps you bring orders, eh? Have you any fresh orders for my daughter, sir?”
Nicholas understood the tone of triumph in which this interrogatory was put; but remembering the necessity of supporting his assumed character, produced a scrap of paper purporting to contain a list of some subjects for drawings which his employer desired to have executed; and with which he had prepared himself in case of any such contingency.
“Oh!” said Mr. Bray. “These are the orders, are they?”
“Since you insist upon the term, sir, yes,” replied Nicholas.
“Then you may tell your master,” said Bray, tossing the paper back again, with an exulting smile, “that my daughter, Miss Madeline Bray, condescends to employ herself no longer in such labours as these; that she is not at his beck and call, as he supposes her to be; that we don’t live upon his money, as he flatters himself we do; that he may give whatever he owes us, to the first beggar that passes his shop, or add it to his own profits next time he calculates them; and that he may go to the devil for me. That’s my acknowledgment of his orders, sir!”
“And this is the independence of a man who sells his daughter as he has sold that weeping girl!” thought Nicholas.
The father was too much absorbed with his own exultation to mark the look of scorn which, for an instant, Nicholas could not have suppressed had he been upon the rack. “There,” he continued, after a short silence, “you have your message and can retire—unless you have any further—ha!—any further orders.”
“I have none,” said Nicholas; “nor, in the consideration of the station you once held, have I used that or any other word which, however harmless in itself, could be supposed to imply authority on my part or dependence on yours. I have no orders, but I have fears—fears that I will express, chafe as you may—fears that you may be consigning that young lady to something worse than supporting you by the labour of her hands, had she worked herself dead. These are my fears, and these fears I found upon your own demeanour. Your conscience will tell you, sir, whether I construe it well or not.”
“For Heaven’s sake!” cried Madeline, interposing in alarm between them. “Remember, sir, he is ill.”
“Ill!” cried the invalid, gasping and catching for breath. “Ill! Ill! I am bearded and bullied by a shop-boy, and she beseeches him to pity me and remember I am ill!”
He fell into a paroxysm of his disorder, so violent that for a few moments Nicholas was alarmed for his life; but finding that he began to recover, he withdrew, after signifying by a gesture to the young lady that he had something important to communicate, and would wait for her outside the room. He could hear that the sick man came gradually, but slowly, to himself, and that without any reference to what had just occurred, as though he had no distinct recollection of it as yet, he requested to be left alone.
“Oh!” thought Nicholas, “that this slender chance might not be lost, and that I might prevail, if it were but for one week’s time and reconsideration!”
“You are charged with some commission to me, sir,” said Madeline, presenting herself in great agitation. “Do not press it now, I beg and pray you. The day after tomorrow; come here then.”
“It will be too late—too late for what I have to say,” rejoined Nicholas, “and you will not be here. Oh, madam, if you have but one thought of him who sent me here, but one last lingering care for your own peace of mind and heart, I do for God’s sake urge you to give me a hearing.”
She attempted to pass him, but Nicholas gently detained her.
“A hearing,” said Nicholas. “I ask you but to hear me: not me alone, but him for whom I speak, who is far away and does not know your danger. In the name of Heaven hear me!”
The poor attendant, with her eyes swollen and red with weeping, stood by; and to her Nicholas appealed in such passionate terms that she opened a side-door, and, supporting her mistress into an adjoining room, beckoned Nicholas to follow them.
“Leave me, sir, pray,” said the young lady.
“I cannot, will not leave you thus,” returned Nicholas. “I have a duty to discharge; and, either here, or in the room from which we have just now come, at whatever risk or hazard to Mr. Bray, I must beseech you to contemplate again the fearful course to which you have been impelled.”
“What course is this you speak of, and impelled by whom, sir?” demanded the young lady, with
