“I was only thinking,” said Edwin clumsily—the fool had not sense enough even to sit down—“I was only thinking, suppose I did want to get married.”
“Who’st been running after?”
“Well, I can’t rightly say there’s anything—what you may call settled. In fact, nothing was to be said about it at all at present. But it’s Miss Lessways, father—Hilda Lessways, you know.”
“Her as came in the shop the other day?”
“Yes.”
“How long’s this been going on?”
Edwin thought of what Hilda had said. “Oh! Over a year.” He could not possibly have said “four days.” “Mind you this is strictly q.t.! Nobody knows a word about it, nobody! But of course I thought I’d better tell you. You’ll say nothing.” He tried wistfully to appeal as one loyal man to another. But he failed. There was no ray of response on his father’s gloomy features, and he slipped back insensibly into the boy whose right to an individual existence had never been formally admitted.
Something base in him—something of that baseness which occasionally actuates the oppressed—made him add: “She’s got an income of her own. Her father left money.” He conceived that this would placate Darius.
“I know all about her father,” Darius sneered, with a short laugh. “And her father’s father! ... Well, lad, ye’ll go your own road.” He appeared to have no further interest in the affair. Edwin was not surprised, for Darius was seemingly never interested in anything except his business; but he thought how strange, how nigh to the incredible, the old man’s demeanour was.
“But about money, I was thinking,” he said, uneasily shifting his pose.