“Seriously, my cousin, you must sometimes feel very much moped here.”
“Never!” answered Lucretia. Not once yet had her eye rested on Mr. Vernon. She felt that she was sounded.
“Yet I am sure you have a taste for the pomps and vanities. Aha! there is ambition under those careless curls,” said Mr. Vernon, with his easy, adorable impertinence.
Lucretia winced.
“But if I were ambitious, what field for ambition could I find in London?”
“The same as Alexander,—empire, my cousin.”
“You forget that I am not a man. Man, indeed, may hope for an empire. It is something to be a Pitt, or even a Warren Hastings.”
Mr. Vernon stared. Was this stupidity, or what?
“A woman has an empire more undisputed than Mr. Pitt’s, and more pitiless than that of Governor Hastings.”
“Oh, pardon me, Mr. Vernon—”