“Yes, papa.”
“And you refused him then—a second time?”
“Yes, papa.”
“Why;—why;—why? You say yourself that you liked him;—that you thought that you would accept him.”
“When it came to speaking the word, papa, I found that I could not pretend to love him when I did not love him. I did not care for him—and I liked somebody else so much better! I just told him the plain truth—and so he went away.”
The thought of all that he had lost, of all that might so easily have been his, for a time overwhelmed Sir Marmaduke, and drove the very memory of Hugh Stanbury almost out of his head. He could understand that a girl should not marry a man whom she did not like; but he could not understand how any girl should not love such a suitor as was Mr. Glascock. And had she accepted this pearl of men, with her position, with her manners and beauty and appearance, such a connection would have been as good as an assured marriage for every one of Sir Marmaduke’s numerous daughters. Nora was just the woman to look like a great lady, a lady of high rank—such a lady as could almost command men to come and throw themselves at her unmarried sisters’ feet. Sir Marmaduke had believed in his daughter Nora, had looked forward to see her do much for the family; and, when the crash had come upon the Trevelyan household, had thought almost as much of her injured prospects as he had of the misfortune of her sister. But now it seemed that more than all the good things of what he had dreamed had been proposed to this unruly girl, in spite of that great crash—and had been rejected! And he saw more than this—as he thought. These good things would have been accepted had it not been for this rascal of a penny-a-liner, this friend of that other rascal Trevelyan, who had come in the way of their family to destroy the happiness of them all! Sir Marmaduke, in speaking of Stanbury after this, would constantly call him a penny-a-liner, thinking that the contamination of the penny communicated itself to all transactions of the Daily Record.
“You have made your bed for yourself, Nora, and you must lie upon it.”
“Just so, papa.”
“I mean that, as you have refused Mr. Glascock’s offer, you can never again hope for such an opening in life.”
“Of course I cannot. I am not such a child as to suppose that there are many Mr. Glascocks to come and run after me. And if there were ever so many, papa, it would be no good. As you say, I have chosen for myself, and I must put up with it. When I see the carriages going about in the streets, and remember how often I shall have to go home in an omnibus, I do think about it a good deal.”
“I’m afraid you will think when it is too late.”
“It isn’t that I don’t like carriages, papa. I do like them; and pretty dresses, and brooches, and men and women who have nothing to do, and balls, and the opera; but—I love this man, and that is more to me than all the rest. I cannot help myself, if it were ever so. Papa, you mustn’t be angry with me. Pray, pray, pray do not say that horrid word again.”
This was the end of the interview. Sir Marmaduke found that he had nothing further to say. Nora, when she reached her last prayer to her father, referring to that curse with which he had threatened her, was herself in tears, and was leaning on him with her head against his shoulder. Of course he did not say a word which could be understood as sanctioning her engagement with Stanbury. He was as strongly determined as ever that it was his duty to save her from the perils of such a marriage as that. But, nevertheless, he was so far overcome by her as to be softened in his manners towards her. He kissed her as he left her, and told her to go to her mother. Then he went out and thought of it all, and felt as though Paradise had been opened to his child and she had refused to enter the gate.
LXXI
Showing What Hugh Stanbury Thought About the Duty of Man
In the conference which took place between Sir Marmaduke and his wife after the interview between him and Nora, it was his idea that nothing further should be done at all. “I don’t suppose the man will come here if he be told not,” said Sir Marmaduke, “and if he does, Nora of course will not see him.” He then suggested that Nora would of course go back with them to the Mandarins, and that when once there she would not be able to see Stanbury any more. “There must be no correspondence or anything of that sort, and so the thing will die away.” But Lady Rowley declared that this would not quite suffice. Mr. Stanbury had made his offer in due form, and must be held to be entitled to an answer. Sir Marmaduke, therefore, wrote the following letter to the “penny-a-liner,” mitigating the asperity of his language in compliance with his wife’s counsels.
Manchester Street, April 20th, 186‒.
My Dear Sir—
Lady Rowley has told me of your proposal to my daughter
