“Mrs. Courton wishes to have the place very much.”
“But, my lady, she has never thought of getting it without paying for it. Lady Ongar, I really cannot advise you to take any such step as that. Indeed, I cannot. I should be wrong, as your lawyer, if I did not point out to you that such a proceeding would be quite romantic—quite so; what the world would call ‘quixotic.’ People don’t expect such things as that. They don’t, indeed.”
“People don’t often have such reasons as I have,” said Lady Ongar. Mr. Turnbull sat silent for a while, looking as though he were unhappy. The proposition made to him was one which, as a lawyer, he felt to be very distasteful to him. He knew that his client had no male friends in whom she confided, and he felt that the world would blame him if he allowed this lady to part with her property in the way she had suggested. “You will find that I am in earnest,” she continued, smiling. “And you may as well give way to my vagaries with a good grace.”
“They would not take it, Lady Ongar.”
“At any rate we can try them. If you will make them understand that I don’t at all want the place, and that it will go to rack and ruin because there is no one to live there, I am sure they will take it.”
Then Mr. Turnbull again sat silent and unhappy, thinking with what words he might best bring forward his last and strongest argument against this rash proceeding.
“Lady Ongar,” he said, “in your peculiar position there are double reasons why you should not act in this way.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Turnbull? What is my peculiar position?”
“The world will say that you have restored Ongar Park because you were afraid to keep it. Indeed, Lady Ongar, you had better let it remain as it is.”
“I care nothing for what the world says,” she exclaimed, rising quickly from her chair;—“nothing; nothing!”
“You should really hold by your rights; you should, indeed. Who can possibly say what other interests may be concerned? You may marry, and live for the next fifty years, and have a family. It is my duty, Lady Ongar, to point out these things to you.”
“I am sure you are quite right, Mr. Turnbull,” she said, struggling to maintain a quiet demeanour. “You, of course, are only doing your duty. But whether I marry or whether I remain as I am, I shall give up this place. And as for what the world, as you call it, may say, I will not deny that I cared much for that on my immediate return. What people said then made me very unhappy. But I care nothing for it now. I have established my rights, and that has been sufficient. To me it seems that the world, as you call it, has been civil enough in its usage of me lately. It is only of those who should have been my friends that I have a right to complain. If you will please to do this thing for me, I will be obliged to you.”
“If you are quite determined about it—”
“I am quite determined. What is the use of the place to me? I never shall go there. What is the use even of the money that comes to me? I have no purpose for it. I have nothing to do with it.”
There was something in her tone as she said this which well filled him with pity.
“You should remember,” he said, “how short a time it is since you became a widow. Things will be different with you soon.”
“My clothes will be different, if you mean that,” she answered; “but I do not know that there will be any other change in me. But I am wrong to trouble you with all this. If you will let Mr. Courton’s lawyer know, with my compliments to Mrs. Courton, that I have heard that she would like to have the place, and that I do not want it, I will be obliged to you.” Mr. Turnbull having by this time perceived that she was quite in earnest, took his leave, having promised to do her bidding.
In this interview she had told her lawyer only a part of the plan which was now running in her head. As for giving up Ongar Park, she took to herself no merit for that. The place had been odious to her ever since she had endeavoured to establish herself there and had found that the clergyman’s wife would not speak to her—that even her own housekeeper would hardly condescend to hold converse with her. She felt that she would be a dog in the manger to keep the place in her own possession. But she had thoughts beyond this—resolutions only as yet half-formed as to a wider surrender. She had disgraced herself, ruined herself, robbed herself of all happiness by the marriage she had made. Her misery had not been simply the misery of that lord’s lifetime. As might have been expected, that was soon over. But an enduring wretchedness had come after that from which she saw no prospect of escape. What was to be her future life, left as she was and would be, in desolation? If she were to give it all up—all the wealth that had been so ill-gotten—might there not then be some hope of comfort for her?
She had been willing enough to keep Lord Ongar’s money, and use it for the purposes of her own comfort, while she had still hoped that comfort might come from it. The remembrance of all that she had to give had been very pleasant to her, as long as she had hoped that
