"You are very kind, Lady Arabella."
"But I think that it is my duty to put a stop, a peremptory stop to anything like a love affair between my son and your niece."
"I have not the least objection in life. If there is such a love affair, put a stop to it—that is, if you have the power."
Here the doctor was doubtless imprudent. But he had begun to think that he had yielded sufficiently to the lady; and he had begun to resolve, also, that though it would not become him to encourage even the idea of such a marriage, he would make Lady Arabella understand that he thought his niece quite good enough for her son, and that the match, if regarded as imprudent, was to be regarded as equally imprudent on both sides. He would not suffer that Mary and her heart and feelings and interest should be altogether postponed to those of the young heir; and, perhaps, he was unconsciously encouraged in this determination by the reflection that Mary herself might perhaps become a young heiress.
"It is my duty," said Lady Arabella, repeating her words with even a stronger de Courcy intonation; "and your duty also, Dr Thorne."
"My duty!" said he, rising from his chair and leaning on the table with the two thigh-bones. "Lady Arabella, pray understand at once, that I repudiate any such duty, and will have nothing whatever to do with it."
"But you do not mean to say that you will encourage this unfortunate boy to marry your niece?"
"The unfortunate boy, Lady Arabella—whom, by the by, I regard as a very fortunate young man—is your son, not mine. I shall take no steps about his marriage, either one way or the other."
"You think it right, then, that your niece should throw herself in his way?"
"Throw herself in his way! What would you say if I came up to Greshamsbury, and spoke to you of your daughters in such language? What would my dear friend Mr Gresham say, if some neighbour's wife should come and so speak to him? I will tell you what he would say: he would quietly beg her to go back to her own home and meddle only with her own matters."