“And what is it you want? I suppose you do not mean to fight Lord Ongar, and that if you did you would not come to me.”
“Fight him! No; I have no quarrel with him. Fighting him would do no good.”
“None in the least; and he would not fight if you were to ask him; and you could not ask him without being false to me.”
“I should have had an example for that, at any rate.”
“That’s nonsense, Mr. Clavering. My falsehood, if you should choose to call me false, is of a very different nature, and is pardonable by all laws known to the world.”
“You are a jilt—that is all.”
“Come, Harry, don’t use hard words,”—and she put her hand kindly upon his arm. “Look at me, such as I am, and at yourself, and then say whether anything but misery could come of a match between you and me. Our ages by the register are the same, but I am ten years older than you by the world. I have two hundred a year, and I owe at this moment six hundred pounds. You have, perhaps, double as much, and would lose half of that if you married. You are an usher at a school.”
“No, madam, I am not an usher at a school.”
“Well, well, you know I don’t mean to make you angry.”
“At the present moment, I am a schoolmaster, and if I remained so, I might fairly look forward to a liberal income. But I am going to give that up.”
“You will not be more fit for matrimony because you are going to give up your profession. Now Lord Ongar has—heaven knows what;—perhaps sixty thousand a year.”
“In all my life I never heard such effrontery—such barefaced, shameless worldliness!”
“Why should I not love a man with a large income?”
“He is old enough to be your father.”
“He is thirty-six, and I am twenty-four.”
“Thirty-six!”
“There is the Peerage for you to look at. But, my dear Harry, do you not know that you are perplexing me and yourself too, for nothing? I was fool enough when I came here from Nice, after papa’s death, to let you talk nonsense to me for a month or two.”
“Did you or did you not swear that you loved me?”
“Oh, Mr. Clavering, I did not imagine that your strength would have condescended to take such advantage over the weakness of a woman. I remember no oaths of any kind, and what foolish assertions I may have made, I am not going to repeat. It must have become manifest to you during these two years that all that was a romance. If it be a pleasure to you to look back to it, of that pleasure I cannot deprive you. Perhaps I also may sometimes look back. But I shall never speak of that time again; and you, if you are as noble as I take you to be, will not speak of it either. I know you would not wish to injure me.”
“I would wish to save you from the misery you are bringing on yourself.”
“In that you must allow me to look after myself. Lord Ongar certainly wants a wife, and I intend to be true to him—and useful.”
“How about love?”
“And to love him, sir. Do you think that no man can win a woman’s love, unless he is filled to the brim with poetry, and has a neck like Lord Byron, and is handsome like your worship? You are very handsome, Harry, and you, too, should go into the market and make the best of yourself. Why should you not learn to love some nice girl that has money to assist you?”
“Julia!”
“No, sir; I will not be called Julia. If you do, I will be insulted, and leave you instantly. I may call you Harry, as being so much younger—though we were born in the same month—and as a sort of cousin. But I shall never do that after today.”
“You have courage enough, then, to tell me that you have not ill-used me?”
“Certainly I have. Why, what a fool you would have me be! Look at me, and tell me whether I am fit to be the wife of such a one as you. By the time you are entering the world, I shall be an old woman, and shall have lived my life. Even if I were fit to be your mate when we were living here together, am I fit, after what I have done and seen during the last two years? Do you think it would really do any good to anyone if I were to jilt, as you call it, Lord Ongar, and tell them all—your cousin, Sir Hugh, and my sister, and your father—that I was going to keep myself up, and marry you when you were ready for me?”
“You mean to say that the evil is done.”
“No, indeed. At the present moment I owe six hundred pounds, and I don’t know where to turn for it, so that my husband may not be dunned for my debts as soon as he has married me. What a wife I should have been for you;—should I not?”
“I could pay the six hundred pounds for you with money that I have earned myself—though you do call me an usher;—and perhaps would ask fewer questions about it than Lord Ongar will do with all his thousands.”
“Dear Harry, I beg your pardon about the usher. Of course, I know that you are a fellow of your college, and that St. Cuthbert’s, where you teach the boys, is one of the grandest schools in England; and I hope you’ll be a bishop; nay—I think you will, if you make up your mind to try for it.”
“I have given up all idea of going into the church.”
“Then you’ll be a judge. I know you’ll be great and distinguished, and that you’ll do it all yourself. You are distinguished already. If you could only
