Thus urged, she proceeded to search for the newspaper, and only after some minutes was it that she remembered Miss Herbert had taken it away to read in the garden. She proposed to send the servant to fetch it, but this I would not permit, pretending at last to concur in her own previously expressed contempt for the paragraph,—but secretly promising myself to go in search of it the moment I should be at liberty,—and once more she resumed the theme of my rashness, and my dangers, and all the troubles I might possibly bring upon my family, and the grief I might occasion my grandmother.
Now, as there are few men upon whom the ties of family and kindred imposed less rigid bonds, I was rather provoked at being reminded of obligations to my grandmother, and was almost driven to declare that she weighed for very little in the balance of my plans and motives. The old lady, however, rescued me from the indiscretion by a fervent entreaty that I would at least ask a certain person what he thought of my present step.
“Will you do this?” said she, with tears in her eyes. “Will you do it now?”
I promised her faithfully.
“Will you do it here, sir, at this table, and let me have the proudest memory in my life to recall the incident.”
“I should like an hour or two for reflection,” said I, pushed very hard by this insistence of hers, for I was sorely puzzled whom I was to write to.
“Oh,” said she, still tearfully, “is it not the habit of hesitating, sir, has cost your house so dearly?”
“No,” said I, “we have been always accounted prompt in action and true to our engagements.”
Heaven forgive me! but in this vainglorious speech I was alluding to the motto of the Potts crest,—“Vigilanti-bus omnia fausta;” or, as some one rendered it, “Potts answers to the night-bell.”
She smiled faintly at my remark. I wonder how she would have looked had she read the thought that suggested it.