“Well, my dear Jack,” said Stephen with a smile, and rubbing his hands softly, “is it not rather for you to go on? I am Una’s guardian, you are her lover.”
“I see,” said Jack, rising and pacing up and down the room. “You want me to ask your consent formally. Well, I do so.”
Stephen laughed as if at an excellent joke.
“What a grim, thorough-going old bulldog you are, my dear Jack!” he exclaimed affectionately. “You ask my consent, as if you did not know that you have it, and my best, my very heartiest wishes into the bargain. But, Jack, don’t you see why I am so pleased—why this makes me so happy? It is because now you will be compelled to do me the favor of taking a share of the poor squire’s money!”
Jack started as if he had been stung.
“You see, my dear fellow! you can’t marry on nothing—now, can you? Love must have a cottage, and—but I beg your pardon, my dear fellow! I am, perhaps, going too far. Much to my grief and regret you have never confided in me as I should have wished, and perhaps—I hope that it may be so—you have some means——”
Jack paced up and down, the perspiration standing on his knitted brow.
In the ecstatic joy which had fallen upon him like a glamour during those few short hours with Una, he had absolutely forgotten that he was penniless, and in debt, and without a prospect in the wide world.
And now it all rushed back upon him; every softly-spoken word of Stephen’s fell upon him like a drop in an icy shower bath, and awoke him from his dream to the stern reality.
What was he to do? Great Heaven, was he actually driven to accept Stephen’s charity?