"I tried it, papa;—the sort of match that you mean. Indeed I was mercenary enough in what I believed to be my views of life. I meant to marry a rich man,—if I could, and did not think much whether I should love him or not. But when the rich man came—"
"What rich man?"
"I suppose mamma has told you about Mr. Glascock."
"Who is Mr. Glascock? I have not heard a word about Mr. Glascock." Then Nora was forced to tell her story,—was called upon to tell it with all its aggravating details. By degrees Sir Marmaduke learned that this Mr. Glascock, who had desired to be his son-in-law, was in very truth the heir to the Peterborough title and estates,—would have been such a son-in-law as almost to compensate, by the brilliance of the connection, for that other unfortunate alliance. He could hardly control his agony when he was made to understand that this embryo peer had in truth been in earnest. "Do you mean that he went down after you into Devonshire?"
"Yes, papa."
"And you refused him then,—a second time?"
"Yes, papa."
"Why;—why;—why? You say yourself that you liked him;—that you thought that you would accept him."
"When it came to speaking the word, papa, I found that I could not pretend to love him when I did not love him. I did not care for him,—and I liked somebody else so much better! I just told him the plain truth,—and so he went away."
The thought of all that he had lost, of all that might so easily have been his, for a time overwhelmed Sir Marmaduke, and drove the very memory of Hugh Stanbury almost out of his head. He could understand that a girl should not marry a man whom she did not like; but he could not understand how any girl should not love such a suitor as was Mr. Glascock. And had she accepted this pearl of men, with her position, with her manners and beauty and appearance, such a connection would have been as good as an assured marriage for every one of Sir Marmaduke's numerous daughters. Nora was just the woman to look like a great lady, a lady of high rank,—such a lady as could almost command men to come and throw themselves at her unmarried sisters' feet. Sir Marmaduke had believed in his daughter Nora, had looked forward to see her do much for the family; and, when the crash had come upon the Trevelyan household, had thought almost as much of her injured prospects as he had of the misfortune of her sister. But now it seemed that more than all the good things of what he had dreamed had been proposed to this unruly girl, in spite of that great crash,—and had been rejected! And he saw more than this,—as he thought. These good things would have been accepted had it not been for this rascal of a penny-a-liner, this friend of that other rascal Trevelyan, who had come in the way of their family to destroy the happiness of them all! Sir Marmaduke, in speaking of Stanbury after this, would constantly call him a penny-a-liner, thinking that the contamination of the penny communicated itself to all transactions of the Daily Record.