“No; that is strange—yet scarcely strange; for, when we last met, his head was full of other things,—love and marriage. Basta! youth will be youth.”
“He has no youth left in him!” exclaimed Harley, passionately. “I doubt if he ever had any. He is one of those men who come into the world with the pulse of a centenarian. You and I never shall be as old as he was in long clothes. Ah, you may laugh; but I am never wrong in my instincts. I disliked him at the first,—his eye, his smile, his voice, his very footstep. It is madness in you to countenance such a marriage; it may destroy all chance of your restoration.”
“Better that than infringe my word once passed.”
“No, no,” exclaimed Harley; “your word is not passed, it shall not be passed. Nay, never look so piteously at me. At all events, pause till we know more of this young man. If he be worthy of her without a dower, why, then, let him lose you your heritage. I should have no more to say.”
“But why lose me my heritage? There is no law in Austria which can dictate to a father what husband to choose for his daughter.”
“Certainly not. But you are out of the pale of law itself just at present; and it would surely be a reason for State policy to withhold your pardon, and it would be to the loss of that favour with your own countrymen, which would now make that pardon so popular, if it were known that the representative of your name were debased by your daughter’s alliance with an English adventurer,—a clerk in a public office. Oh, sage in theory, why are you such a simpleton in action?”
Nothing moved by this taunt, Riceabocca rubbed his hands, and then stretched them comfortably over the fire.
“My friend,” said he, “the representation of my name would pass to my son.”
“But you have no son.”
“Hush! I am going to have one; my Jemima informed me of it yesterday morning; and it was upon that information that I resolved to speak to Leslie. Am I a simpleton now?”