“Very well. I suppose you are right to tell me. Of course you know that I can do nothing for you; and I don’t suppose that you can do anything for me. As far as your own welfare goes, if she has a large fortune—”
“She has no fortune.”
“No fortune!”
“Two or three thousand pounds perhaps.”
“Then I look upon it as an act of simple madness, and can only say that as such I shall treat it. I have nothing in my power, and therefore I can neither do you good or harm; but I will not hear any particulars, and I can only advise you to break it off, let the trouble be what it may.”
“I certainly shall not do that, sir.”
“Then I have nothing more to say. Don’t ask me to be present, and don’t ask me to see her.”
“You haven’t heard her name yet.”
“I do not care one straw what her name is.”
“It is Adelaide Palliser.”
“Adelaide Muggins would be exactly the same thing to me. My dear Gerard, I have lived too long in the world to believe that men can coin into money the noble blood of wellborn wives. Twenty thousand pounds is worth more than all the blood of all the Howards, and a wife even with twenty thousand pounds would make you a poor, embarrassed, and half-famished man.”
“Then I suppose I shall be whole famished, as she certainly has not got a quarter of that sum.”
“No doubt you will.”
“Yet, sir, married men with families have lived on my income.”
“And on less than a quarter of it. The very respectable man who brushes my clothes no doubt does so. But then you see he has been brought up in that way. I suppose that you as a bachelor put by every year at least half your income?”
“I never put by a shilling, sir. Indeed, I owe a few hundred pounds.”
“And yet you expect to keep a house over your head, and an expensive wife and family, with lady’s maid, nurses, cook, footman, and grooms, on a sum which has been hitherto insufficient for your own wants! I didn’t think you were such an idiot, my boy.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“What will her dress cost?”
“I have not the slightest idea.”
“I dare say not. Probably she is a horsewoman. As far as I know anything of your life that is the sphere in which you will have made the lady’s acquaintance.”
“She does ride.”
“No doubt, and so do you; and it will be very easy to say whither you will ride together if you are fools enough to get married. I can only advise you to do nothing of the kind. Is there anything else?”
There was much more to be said if Gerard could succeed in forcing his father to hear him. Mr. Maule, who had hitherto been standing, seated himself as he asked that last question, and took up the book which had been prepared for his morning’s delectation. It was evidently his intention that his son should leave him. The news had been communicated to him, and he had said all that he could say on the subject. He had at once determined to confine himself to a general view of the matter, and to avoid details—which might be personal to himself. But Gerard had been specially required to force his father into details. Had he been left to himself he would certainly have thought that the conversation had gone far enough. He was inclined, almost as well as his father, to avoid present discomfort. But when Miss Palliser had suddenly—almost suddenly—accepted him; and when he had found himself describing the prospects of his life in her presence and in that of Lady Chiltern, the question of the Maule Abbey inheritance had of necessity been discussed. At Maule Abbey there might be found a home for the married couple, and—so thought Lady Chiltern—the only fitting home. Mr. Maule, the father, certainly did not desire to live there. Probably arrangements might be made for repairing the house and furnishing it with Adelaide’s money. Then, if Gerard Maule would be prudent, and give up hunting, and farm a little himself—and if Adelaide would do her own housekeeping and dress upon forty pounds a year, and if they would both live an exemplary, model, energetic, and strictly economical life, both ends might be made to meet. Adelaide had been quite enthusiastic as to the forty pounds, and had suggested that she would do it for thirty. The housekeeping was a matter of course, and the more so as a leg of mutton roast or boiled would be the beginning and the end of it. To Adelaide the discussion had been exciting and pleasurable, and she had been quite in earnest when looking forward to a new life at Maule Abbey. After all there could be no such great difficulty for a young married couple to live on £800 a year, with a house and garden of their own. There would be no carriage and no man servant till—till old Mr. Maule was dead. The suggestion as to the ultimate and desirable haven was wrapped up in ambiguous words. “The property must be yours some day,” suggested Lady Chiltern. “If I outlive my father.” “We take that for granted; and then, you know—” So Lady Chiltern went on, dilating upon a future state of squirearchal bliss and rural independence. Adelaide was enthusiastic; but Gerard Maule—after he had assented to the abandonment of his hunting, much as a man assents to being hung when the antecedents of his life have put any option in the matter out of his power—had sat silent and almost moody while the joys of his coming life were described to him. Lady Chiltern, however, had been urgent in pointing out to him that the scheme of living at Maule Abbey could not
