“Oh! I am sure you would. You are just the same sort of fellow I was when at your age, and I was much happier after I was married, so I know it. Now, you see, your cousin has a hundred thousand pounds; in fact something more than that.”
“What?—Fanny! Poor Ballindine! So that’s the way with him is it! When I was contradicting the rumour of his marriage with Fanny, I little thought that I was to be his rival! At any rate, I shall have to shoot him first.”
“You might, at any rate, confine yourself to sense, Lord Kilcullen, when I am taking so much pains to talk sensibly to you, on a subject which, I presume, cannot but interest you.”
“Indeed, my lord, I’m all attention; and I do intend to talk sensibly when I say that I think you are proposing to treat Ballindine very ill. The world will think well of your turning him adrift on the score of the match being an imprudent one; but it won’t speak so leniently of you if you expel him, as soon as your ward becomes an heiress, to make way for your own son.”
“You know that I’m not thinking of doing so. I’ve long seen that Lord Ballindine would not make a fitting husband for Fanny—long before Harry died.”
“And you think that I shall?”
“Indeed I do. I think she will be lucky to get you.”
“I’m flattered into silence: pray go on.”
“You will be an earl—a peer—and a man of property. What would she become if she married Lord Ballindine?”
“Oh, you are quite right! Go on. I wonder it never occurred to her before to set her cap at me.”