"I don't see why," said Lizzie.
"He is not bound to anybody as I am bound to my aunt. No one can have exacted an oath from him. Lady Eustace, you don't quite understand how we are situated. I wonder whether you would take the trouble to be good to me?"
Lucinda Roanoke had never asked a favour of her before;—had never, to Lizzie's knowledge, asked a favour of any one. "In what way can I be good to you?" she said.
"Make him give it up. You may tell him what you like of me. Tell him that I shall only make him miserable, and more despicable than he is;—that I shall never be a good wife to him. Tell him that I am thoroughly bad, and that he will repent it to the last day of his life. Say whatever you like,—but make him give it up."
"When everything has been prepared!"
"What does all that signify compared to a life of misery? Lady Eustace, I really think that I should—kill him, if he really were—were my husband." Lizzie at last said that she would, at any rate, speak to Sir Griffin.
And she did speak to Sir Griffin, having waited three or four days for an opportunity to do so. There had been some desperately sharp words between Sir Griffin and Mrs. Carbuncle with reference to money. Sir Griffin had been given to understand that Lucinda had, or would have, some few hundred pounds, and insisted that the money should be handed over to him on the day of his marriage. Mrs. Carbuncle had declared that the money was to come from property to be realised in New York, and had named a day which had seemed to Sir Griffin to be as the Greek Kalends. He expressed an opinion that he was swindled, and Mrs. Carbuncle, unable to restrain herself, had turned upon him full of wrath. He was caught by Lizzie as he was descending the stairs, and in the dining-room he poured out the tale of his wrongs. "That woman doesn't know what fair dealing means," said he.
"That's a little hard, Sir Griffin, isn't it?" said Lizzie.
"Not a bit. A trumpery six hundred pounds! And she hasn't a shilling of fortune, and never will have, beyond that! No fellow ever was more generous or more foolish than I have been." Lizzie, as she heard this, could not refrain from thinking of the poor departed Sir Florian. "I didn't look for fortune, or say a word about money, as almost every man does,—but just took her as she was. And now she tells me that I can't have just the bit of money that I wanted for our tour. It would serve them both right if I were to give it up."
"Why don't you?" said Lizzie. He looked quickly, sharply, and closely into her face as she asked the question. "I would, if I thought as you do."