“It is so strange to hear men like yourself—men who in a measure make their own fate,—always accuse Destiny. Who is there, let me ask,” said she, with a boldness the stronger that she saw an influence followed her words,—“who is there who could with more of graceful pride retire from the busy cares of life than he who has worked so long, so successfully, for his fellow-men? Who is there who, having achieved fortune, friends, station—Why do you shake your head?” cried she, suddenly.
“You estimate my position too flatteringly, Lady Augusta,” said he, slowly, and like one laboring with some painful reflection. “Of fortune—if that mean wealth—I have more than I need. Friends—what the world calls such—I suppose I may safely say I possess my share of. But as to station, by which I would imply the rank which stamps a certain grade in society, and carries with it a prestige—”
“It is your own whenever you care to demand it,” broke she in. “It is not when the soldier mounts the breach that his country showers its honours on him—it is when, victory achieved, he comes back great and triumphant. You have but to declare that your labours are completed, your campaign finished, to meet any, the proudest, recognition your services could claim. You know my father,” said she, suddenly changing her voice to a tone at once confidential and intimate—“you know how instinctively, as it were, he surrounds himself with all the prejudices of his order. Well, even he, as late as last night, said to me, 'Dunn ought to be one of us, Augusta. We want men of his stamp. The lawyers overbear us just now. It is men of wider sympathies lets technical less narrowed, that we need. He ought to be one of us.' Knowing what a great admission that was for one like him, I ventured to ask how this was to be accomplished. 'Ministers are often the last to ratify the judgment the public' he pronounced.”
“Well, and what said you to that,” asked Dunn, eagerly.
“Let him only open his mind to Lady Augusta,” said she. “If he but have the will I promise to show him the way.”
Dunn uttered no reply, but with bent-down head walked along, deep in thought.
“May I ask you to lend me your arm, Mr. Dunn?” said Lady Augusta, in her gentlest of voices; and Dunn's heart beat with a strange, proud significance as he gave it.
They spoke but little as they returned to the cottage.