"I am; do you think I am right; tell me as an old and trusty friend,' he said gravely.
"Every man should marry, you should know whom to choose, being a cosmopolitan as you are; the Hall should be occupied; you are a good and faithful steward, giving to the poor with no niggard hand, and out of your present small income; yes, you should decidedly marry and you should as decidedly have an heir," he added smiling.
"As you think it wise, I wish I had put on the shackles before, especially as a home for my darling Vaura is my strongest motive, and now she will marry and I might have had her with me all these years; as for an heir I bother myself very little about it; in my early manhood I loved, and had I been loved in return," he said bitterly; "heirs would now, I expect, have been numerous, and now it is all her fault," he said weakly, "if my venture does not bring me happiness."
"Never mind the past, my dear fellow, we have done with it," said the rector kindly, "be true to the wife you are taking; 'Loyal unto death' (your own motto), or dishonour, which, God save us all from, we have nothing to do with; the man who is loyal to his wife has a right to expect equal devotion on her part."
"Your own wedded life has been very happy," said Trevalyon earnestly.
"It has; heaven grant you both the same! Trevalyon, you will pardon an old friend (and a friend of your father's also); you have said you have been a 'good deal bothered lately,' is it anything you can confide in me—it lightens care to share it?"
"I thank you, Douglas; you are very kind. I have a visit to my place on the tapis, and when this is the case my heart is full of sad memories; my tenants, too, under my late steward's regime, have been extremely disaffected; so I take the Great Northern at sunrise on to-morrow for Northumberland. I have been feeling very much lately the burden of my lonely life, the outcome as it is, of my dear father's blighted hopes; grief-stricken; desertion."
"Pardon me, you are under some promise of celibacy to your father, I believe."
"I am."
"It was no oath?"