“Money does it all,” said Edward, in the same meditative way. “I am supposed to have as much as he has, but I am tied to an old woman’s apron, and would lose everything were I to venture like he. Why should he be free and I a slave? I know no reason. Caprice—chance, made it so. He might have been taken in at the Grange, and I at the White House. Then I should have been the man, and he been nowhere. It is just so in life. Nothing but money can set it right. Money does. You can believe in Providence when you have money. I shall get it some day; but so far as this goes, I shall be too late. For you, there are compensations,” he said, giving a little glance at her. “You will find him very manageable—more manageable than many who would have suited you better—than myself for instance. I should not have been docile at all—even to you—but he will be. You can do what you please with him; there is compensation in all—”
“Cousin Edward,” said Hester, suddenly finding her voice, “you told me just now that I disliked to walk alone, that I was poor and had no bodyguard. I said, who would harm me? but you have proved that it was true, and I a fool. I did want a bodyguard, someone to see that I was not insulted, to protect me, on a quiet country road, from—from—”
“Yes? from—whom? an unsuccessful suitor: a man that always has a right to be insulting,” cried Edward with a sort of laugh, “to relieve his mind. True! to be sure all these things are true. It is quite right that a girl needs protection. Men are stronger than she is, and they will insult her if it is in their power, if not in one way then in another. The weak will always go to the wall. If there is nobody to take care of you, and nobody to punish me for it, of course I shall treat you badly. If I am not any worse than my neighbours I don’t pretend to be any better. Do you think I should have waited for you tonight if I had not wanted to insult you? because you were alone and unprotected and unfriended,” he said, with a sort of snarl at her, turning upon her with a fierce sneer on his face.
Hester was struck with a horror which stopped her indignation in full career. “Oh,” she cried, “how can you make yourself out to be so ignoble, so ungenerous! even when you say it I cannot believe it; to insult me cannot be what you mean.”
“Why not?” he said, looking at her, “you can’t do anything to me. For your own sake you will tell nobody that Edward Vernon met you and—said anything that he ought not to have said. Besides, if you wished to ruin me with her,” he waved his hand towards the Grange as he spoke, “in the first place she would not believe you, in the second place if it came to that I should not much mind. It would be emancipation anyhow; I should be no longer a slave bound to follow a woman, in chains. If I lost in one way, I should gain in another. But I am safe with you,” he said with another laugh; “I am free to irritate you, to outrage you as much as I please; you will not complain: and in that case why should not I take it out of you?” he cried, turning fiercely upon her.
Hester was too much startled to retain the violent indignation and offence of her first impulse. She was overwhelmed with pity and horror.
“Cousin Edward,” she said, “you do not mean all that. You did not come here to insult me. You must have had some other thought. You must be very unhappy somehow, and troubled, and distressed to speak as you are doing now. It comes out of yourself, it is not anything about me.”
“Oh, yes, it is something about you,” he said with a laugh. Then after a pause, “But you have some insight all the same. No. I’ll tell you what it is; it is money, money, Hester—that is what we all want. If you had it you would no more marry Harry than old Rule; if I had it—And the thing clear is that I must have it,” said Edward, breaking off abruptly. “I can’t wait.”
Hester went home very much bewildered, outraged by all he said, yet more sorry than angry. He had not made any reply to her appeal for his confidence, yet she knew that she was right—that it was out of a troubled and miserable heart that he had spoken, not merely out of wounded feeling on the subject of herself. She did not know whether he understood what she said to him on the subject of Harry, or if that penetrated his mind at all; but she went home at once more miserable and more interested than she thought she had ever been in her life. Had not she too drawn some conclusion of the same kind from her own experiences, from the atmosphere of the Vernonry so full of ingratitude, unkindness, and all uncharitableness? She came very slowly home, and took no notice of the way in which Mildmay Vernon squinted at her from his corner, and the Miss Ridgways waved their hands from the window. Harry then had not come home with her. “I knew he was not such a fool,”
