"You have sent for me, Peter—I beg pardon. I was so glad when you sent. I would have come before, only I was afraid that you would be annoyed. Is there anything that we can do for you?"
"Nothing at all that you can do, I fear."
"Somebody told us that you were thinking of going abroad." Here he shook his head. "I think it was Harry." Here he shook his head and frowned. "Had you not some idea of going abroad?"
"That is all gone," he said, solemnly.
"It would have enabled you to get over this disappointment without feeling it so acutely."
"I do feel it; but not exactly the disappointment. There I think I have been saved from a misfortune which would certainly have driven me mad. That woman's voice daily in my ear could have had no other effect. I have at any rate been saved from that."
"What is it, then, that troubles you?"
"Everybody knows that I intended it. All the country has heard of it. But yet was not my purpose a good one? Why should not a gentleman marry if he wants to leave his estate to his own son?"
"Of course he must marry before he can do that."
"Where was I to get a young lady—just outside of my own class? There was Miss Puffle. I did think of her. But just at the moment she went off with young Tazlehurst. That was another misfortune. Why should Miss Puffle have descended so low just before I had thought of her? And I couldn't marry quite a young girl. How could I expect such a one to live here with me at Buston, where it is rather dull? When I looked about there was nobody except that horrid Miss Thoroughbung. You just look about and tell me if there was any one else. Of course my circle is circumscribed. I have been very careful whom I have admitted to my intimacy, and the result is that I know almost nobody. I may say that I was driven to ask Miss Thoroughbung."