“But you are not thinking of matrimony yet awhile, I hope, Mr. Sampson?”
“Yet awhile,” echoed Sampson; “I’m three and thirty. If I don’t take the business in hand now, Miss Clare, it will be too late. I am thinking of matrimony, and have been thinking of it very constantly for the last six months. But there is only one girl in the world that I would care to marry, and if she won’t have me I shall go down to my grave a bachelor.”
“Don’t say that,” cried Celia. “That is deciding things much too hastily. You haven’t seen all the girls in the world. How can you know anything about it? Hazlehurst is such a narrow sphere. A man might as well live in a nutshell, and call that life. You ought to travel. You ought to see the world of fashion. There are charming boardinghouses at Brighton, now, where you would meet very stylish girls. Why don’t you try Brighton?”
“I don’t want to try Brighton, or anywhere else,” exclaimed Mr. Sampson, with a wounded air. “I tell you I am fixed, fixed as fate. There is only one girl in this magnificent universe I want for my wife. Celia, you must feel it, you must know it—you are that girl.”
“Oh, I am so sorry,” cried Celia. “This is quite too dreadful.”
“It is not dreadful at all. Don’t be carried away by the first shock of the thing. I may have been too sudden, perhaps. Oh, Celia, I have worshipped too long in silence, and I may, perchance—” Mr. Sampson rather dwelt on the perchance, which seemed to him a word of peculiar appropriateness—almost a lapse into poetry. “I may, perchance, have been too sudden in my avowal. But when a man is as much in earnest as I am, he does not study details. Celia, you must not say no.”
“But I do say no,” protested Celia.
“Not an irrevocable no?”
“Yes, a most irrevocable no. I am very much flattered, of course, and I really like you very much—as we all do—because you are good and true and honest. But I never, never, never could think of you in any other character than that of a trustworthy friend.”
“Do you really mean it?” asked poor Sampson aghast.
He was altogether crushed by this unexpected blow. That any young lady in Hazlehurst could refuse the honour of an alliance with him had never occurred to him as within the range of possibility. He had taken plenty of time in making up his mind upon the matrimonial question. He had been careful and deliberate, and had waited till he was thoroughly convinced that Celia Clare was precisely the kind of wife he wanted, before committing himself by a serious declaration. He had been careful that his polite attentions should not be too significant, until the final die was cast. His journey to Brittany had given him ample leisure for reflection. Prostrate in his comfortable berth on board the St. Malo steamer, in the dim light of the cabin lamp, lulled by the monotonous oscillation of the steamer, he had been able to contemplate the question of marriage from every standpoint, and this offer of tonight was the result of those meditations.
Celia told him, with all due courtesy, that she really did mean to refuse him.
“You might do worse,” he said, dolefully.
“No doubt I might. Some rather vulgar person has compared matrimony to a bag of snakes, in which there is only one eel. Perhaps you are the one eel. But then you see I am not obliged to marry anybody. I can go on like Queen Elizabeth,
“ ‘In maiden meditation, fancy free.’ ”
“That’s not likely,” said Mr. Sampson, moodily. “A young lady of your stamp won’t remain single. You’re too attractive and too lively. No, you’ll marry some scamp for the sake of his good looks: and perhaps the day will come when you’ll remember this evening, and feel sorry that you rejected an honest man’s offer.”
They were at the house by this time, much to Celia’s relief, as she felt that the conversation could hardly be carried on further without unpleasantness.
She stopped in the hall, and offered her hand to her dejected admirer.
“Shake hands, Mr. Sampson, to show that you bear no malice,” she said. “Be assured I shall always like and respect you as a friend of our family.”
She did not wait for his answer, but tripped lightly upstairs, determined not to make her appearance again that evening.
Tom Sampson was inclined to return to his own house, without waiting to say good night to his client, but while he stood in the hall making up his mind on this point, John Treverton came out of the dining-room to look for him.
“Why, Sampson, what are you doing out there?” he cried. “Come in and have some supper. You haven’t eaten much since we left Paris.”
“Much,” echoed Sampson, dismally. “A segment of hard biscuit on board the boat, and a cup of weak tea at Dover, have been my only sustenance. But, I don’t feel that I care about supper,” he added, surveying the table with a melancholy eye. “I ought to be hungry, but I’m not.”
“Why, you seem quite low spirited, Mr. Sampson?” said Laura, kindly.
“I am feeling a little low tonight, Mrs. Treverton.”
“Nonsense, man. Low spirited on such a night as this, after the triumph you achieved at Auray! Wasn’t it wonderful, Laura, that Sampson’s acumen should have hit upon the idea of my first marriage being invalid? It was the only chance we had—the only thing that could have saved the estate.”
“Of course it was,” replied Sampson, “and that was why I thought of it. A lawyer is bound to see every chance, however remote. I don’t know that in my own mind I thought it really likely that your first wife had been encumbered with a living husband when you married her; but I saw that it was just the one loophole for
