"I am glad to hear you say so," said the lawyer, smiling.
"I cannot, and so you have the best of me. But you can't make me like a lord, or think that a young man ought to wear a silk gown."
"I quite agree with you that the silk gowns should be kept for their elders," and so the conversation was ended.
Daniel Thwaite had not been made to like a lord, but the eloquence of the urbane lawyer was not wasted on him. Thinking of it all as he wandered alone through the streets, he began to believe that it would be more manly to do as he was advised than to abstain because the doing of the thing would in itself be disagreeable to him. On the following day, Lady Anna was with him as usual; for the pretext of his wound still afforded to her the means of paying to him those daily visits which in happier circumstances he would naturally have paid to her. "Would you like to go to Yoxham?" he said. She looked wistfully up into his face. With her there was a real wish that the poles might be joined together by her future husband. She had found, as she had thought of it, that she could not make herself either happy or contented except by marrying him, but it had not been without regret that she had consented to destroy altogether the link which bound her to the noble blood of the Lovels. She had been made to appreciate the sweet flavour of aristocratic influences, and now that the Lovels were willing to receive her in spite of her marriage, she was more than willing to accept their offered friendship. "If you really wish it, you shall go," he said.
"But you must go also."
"Yes;—for one day. And I must have a pair of gloves and a black coat."
"And a blue one,—to be married in."
"Alas me! Must I have a pink silk gown to walk about in, early in the morning?"
"You shall if you like, and I'll make it for you."
"I'd sooner see you darning my worsted stockings, sweetheart."