“Yes, papa, he did come,” she said. “I told mamma all about me.”
“And she told me, of course. You did what was quite right, and I should not have thought it necessary to speak to you had not Lord Bracy written to me.”
“Lord Bracy has written!” said Mary. It seemed to her, as it had done to her mother, that Lord Bracy must have written angrily; but though she thought so, she plucked up her spirit gallantly, telling herself that though Lord Bracy might be angry with his own son, he could have no cause to be displeased with her.
“Yes; I have a letter, which you shall read. The young man seems to have been very much in earnest.”
“I don’t know,” said Mary, with some little exultation at her heart.
“It seems but the other day that he was a boy, and now he has become suddenly a man.” To this Mary said nothing; but she also had come to the conclusion that, in this respect, Lord Carstairs had lately changed—very much for the better. “Do you like him, Mary?”
“Like him, papa?”
“Well, my darling; how am I to put it? He is so much in earnest that he has got his father to write to me. He was coming over himself again before he went to Oxford; but he told his father what he was going to do, and the Earl stopped him. There’s the letter, and you may read it.”
Mary read the letter, taking herself apart to a corner of the room, and seemed to her father to take a long time in reading it. But there was very much on which she was called upon to make up her mind during those few minutes. Up to the present time—up to the moment in which her father had now summoned her into his study, she had resolved that it was “impossible.” She had become so clear on the subject that she would not ask herself the question whether she could love the young man. Would it not be wrong to love the young man? Would it not be a longing for the top brick of the chimney, which she ought to know was out of her reach? So she had decided it, and had therefore already taught herself to regard the declaration made to her as the ebullition of a young man’s folly. But not the less had she known how great had been the thing suggested to her—how excellent was this top brick of the chimney; and as to the young man himself, she could not but feel that, had matters been different, she might have loved him. Now there had come a sudden change; but she did not at all know how far she might go to meet the change, nor what the change altogether meant. She had been made sure by her father’s question that he had taught himself to hope. He would not have asked her whether she liked him—would not, at any rate, have asked that question in that voice—had he not been prepared to be good to her had she answered in the affirmative. But then this matter did not depend upon her father’s wishes—or even on her father’s judgment. It was necessary that, before she said another word, she should find out what Lord Bracy said about it. There she had Lord Bracy’s letter in her hand, but her mind was so disturbed that she hardly knew how to read it aright at the spur of the moment.
“You understand what he says, Mary?”
“I think so, papa.”
“It is a very kind letter.”
“Very kind indeed. I should have thought that he would not have liked it at all.”
“He makes no objection of that kind. To tell the truth, Mary, I should have thought it unreasonable had he done so. A gentleman can do no better than marry a lady. And though it is much to be a nobleman, it is more to be a gentleman.”
“Some people think so much of it. And then his having been here as a pupil! I was very sorry when he spoke to me.”
“All that is past and gone. The danger is that such an engagement would be long.”
“Very long.”
“You would be afraid of that, Mary?” Mary felt that this was hard upon her, and unfair. Were she to say that the danger of a long engagement did not seem to her to be very terrible, she would at once be giving up everything. She would have declared then that she did love the young man; or, at any rate, that she intended to do so. She would have succumbed at the first hint that such succumbing was possible to her. And yet she had not known that she was very much afraid of a long engagement. She would, she thought, have been much more afraid had a speedy marriage been proposed to her. Upon the whole, she did not know whether it would not be nice to go on knowing that the young man loved her, and to rest secure on her faith in him. She was sure of this—that the reading of Lord Bracy’s letter had in some way made her happy, though she was unwilling at once to express her happiness to her father. She was quite sure that she could make no immediate reply to that question, whether she was afraid of a long engagement. “I must answer Lord Bracy’s letter, you know,” said the Doctor.
“Yes, papa.”
“And what shall I say to him?”
“I don’t know, papa.”
“And yet you must tell me what to say, my darling.”
“Must I, papa?”
“Certainly! Who else can tell me? But I will not answer it today. I will put it off till Monday.” It was Saturday morning on which the letter was being discussed—a day of which a considerable portion was generally appropriated to the preparation of a sermon. “In the meantime you had better talk to mamma; and on Monday
