"And this is to be the end of it?"
"If you please, Mr. Crocker."
"Well!"
"If ever you feel inclined to speak your mind to another young woman, and you carry it as far as we did, and you wishes to hold on to her, don't you go and tear Her Majesty's Mail papers. And when she tells you a bit of her mind, as I did just now, don't you go and put nasty words into her mouth. Now, if you please, you may just as well send over that clock and that harmonium to Daniel Tribbledale, Esq., King's Head Court, Great Broad Street." So saying she left him, and congratulated herself on having terminated the interview without much unpleasantness.
Crocker, as he shook the dust off his feet upon leaving Paradise Row, began to ask himself whether he might not upon the whole congratulate himself as to the end to which that piece of business had been brought. When he had first resolved to offer his hand to the young lady, he had certainly imagined that that hand would not be empty. Clara was no doubt "a fine girl," but not quite so young as she was once. And she had a temper of her own. Matrimony, too, was often followed by many troubles. Paradise Row would no doubt utter jeers, but he need not go there to hear them. He was not quite sure but that the tearing of the papers would in the long run be beneficial to him.
CHAPTER XVI.
PEGWELL BAY.
July had come and nearly gone before Lord Hampstead again saw Marion Fay. He had promised not to go to Pegwell Bay,—hardly understanding why such a promise had been exacted from him, but still acceding to it when it had been suggested to him by Mrs. Roden, at the request, as she said, of the Quaker. It was understood that Marion would soon return to Holloway, and that on that account the serenity of Pegwell Bay need not be disturbed by the coming of so great a man as Lord Hampstead. Hampstead had of course ridiculed the reason, but had complied with the request,—with the promise, however, that Marion should return early in the summer. But the summer weeks had passed by, and Marion did not return.
Letters passed between them daily in which Marion attempted always to be cheerful. Though she had as yet invented no familiar name for her noble lover, yet she had grown into familiarity with him, and was no longer afraid of his nobility. "You oughtn't to stay there," she said, "wasting your life and doing nothing, because of a sick girl. You've got your yacht, and are letting all the summer weather go by." In answer to this he wrote to her, saying that he had sold his yacht. "Could you have gone with me, I would have kept it," he wrote. "Would you go with me I would have another ready for you, before you would be ready. I will make no assurance as to my future life. I cannot even guess what may become of me. It may be that I shall come to live on board some ship so that I may be all alone. But with my heart as it is now I cannot bear the references which others make to me about empty pleasures." At the same time he sold his horses, but he said nothing to her as to that.