“One thing I 'll swear to you, Lizzy,—swear it by all that is most solemn,” cried he, at last: “if you consent to share fortunes with me, I 'll never engage in anything—no matter how sure or how safe—without your full concurrence. I have been buying experience this many a year, and pretty sharply has it cost me. They make a gentleman pay his footing, I promise you; but I do know a thing or two at last; I have had my eyes opened!”
Oh, Annesley Beecher, can you not see how you are damaging your own cause? You have but to look at that averted head, or, bending round, to catch a glimpse of those fair features, and mark the haughty scorn upon them, to feel that you are pleading against yourself.
“And what may be this knowledge of which you are so proud?” said she, coldly.
“Oh, as to that,” said he, in some confusion at the tone she had assumed, “it concerns many a thing you never heard of. The turf, and the men that live by it, make a little world of their own; they don't bother their heads about parties or politics,—don't care a farthing who 's 'in' or who 's 'out.' They keep their wits—and pretty sharp wits they are—for what goes on in Scott's stable, and how Holt stands for the St. Léger. They 'd rather hear how Velocipede eat his corn, than hear all the Cabinet secrets of Europe; and for that matter, so would I.”
“I do not blame you for not caring for State secrets,—it is very possible they would interest you little; but surely you might imagine some more fitting career than what, after all, is a mere trading on the weakness of others. To make of an amusement a matter of profit is, in my eyes, mean; it is contemptible.”
“That's not the way to look on it at all. The first men in England have race-horses.”
“And precisely in the fact of their great wealth do they soar above all the ignoble associations the turf obliges to those who live by it.”
“Well, I 'll give it up; there's my word on't I 'll never put my foot in Tattersall's yard again. I 'll take my name off the Turf Club,—is that enough?”
She could not help smiling at the honest zeal of this sacrifice; but the smile had none of the scorn her features displayed before.
“Oh, Lizzy!” cried he, enthusiastically, “if I was sure we could just live on here as we are doing,—never leave this little valley, nor see more of the world than we do daily,—I'd not exchange the life for a duke's fortune—”