‘Really, Mr. Snitchey, and Mr. Craggs, partners both,’ said the client, interrupting him; ‘you know your duty to your clients, and you know well enough, I am sure, that it is no part of it to interfere in a mere love affair, which I am obliged to confide to you. I am not going to carry the young lady off, without her own consent. There’s nothing illegal in it. I never was Mr. Heathfield’s bosom friend. I violate no confidence of his. I love where he loves, and I mean to win where he would win, if I can.’
‘He can’t, Mr. Craggs,’ said Snitchey, evidently anxious and discomfited. ‘He can’t do it, sir. She dotes on Mr. Alfred.’
‘Does she?’ returned the client.
‘Mr. Craggs, she dotes on him, sir,’ persisted Snitchey.
‘I didn’t live six weeks, some few months ago, in the Doctor’s house for nothing; and I doubted that soon,’ observed the client. ‘She would have doted on him, if her sister could have brought it about; but I watched them. Marion avoided his name, avoided the subject: shrunk from the least allusion to it, with evident distress.’
‘Why should she, Mr. Craggs, you know? Why should she, sir?’ inquired Snitchey.
‘I don’t know why she should, though there are many likely reasons,’ said the client, smiling at the attention and perplexity expressed in Mr. Snitchey’s shining eye, and at his cautious way of carrying on the conversation, and making himself informed upon the subject; ‘but I know she does. She was very young when she made the engagement—if it may be called one, I am not even sure of that—and has repented of it, perhaps. Perhaps—it seems a foppish thing to say, but upon my soul I don’t mean it in that light—she may have fallen in love with me, as I have fallen in love with her.’
‘He, he! Mr. Alfred, her old playfellow too, you remember, Mr. Craggs,’ said Snitchey, with a disconcerted laugh; ‘knew her almost from a baby!’
‘Which makes it the more probable that she may be tired of his idea,’ calmly pursued the client, ‘and not indisposed to exchange it for the newer one of another lover, who presents himself (or is presented by his horse) under romantic circumstances; has the not unfavourable reputation—with a country girl—of having lived thoughtlessly and gaily, without doing much harm to anybody; and who, for his youth and figure, and so forth—this may seem foppish again, but upon my soul I don’t mean it in that light—might perhaps pass muster in a crowd with Mr. Alfred himself.’
There was no gainsaying the last clause, certainly; and Mr. Snitchey, glancing at him, thought so. There was something naturally graceful and pleasant in the very carelessness of his air. It seemed to suggest, of his comely face and well-knit figure, that they might be greatly better if he chose: and that, once roused and made earnest (but he never had been earnest yet), he could be full of fire and purpose. ‘A dangerous sort of libertine,’ thought the shrewd lawyer, ‘to seem to catch the spark he wants, from a young lady’s eyes.’