‘I’m not talking of misery. I’d only say, don’t get yourself into any mess. These foreign girls are very wide-awake.’
‘Don’t believe that, Harry; one of our home-bred damsels would give them a distance and beat them in the race for a husband. It’s only in England girls are trained to angle for marriage, take my word for it.’
‘Be it so—I only warn you that if you get into any scrape I’ll accept none of the consequences. Lord Danesbury is ready enough to say that, because I am some ten years older than you, I should have kept you out of mischief. I never contracted for such a bear-leadership; though I certainly told Lady Maude I’d turn Queen’s evidence against you if you became a traitor.’
‘I wonder you never told me that before,’ said Walpole, with some irritation of manner.
‘I only wonder that I told it now!’ replied the other gruffly.
‘Then I am to take it, that in your office of guardian, you’d rather we’d decline this invitation, eh?’
‘I don’t care a rush for it either way, but, looking to the sort of day it is out there, I incline to keep the house.’
‘I don’t mind bad weather, and I’ll go,’ said Walpole, in a way that showed temper was involved in the resolution.
Lockwood made no other reply than heaping a quantity of turf on the fire, and seating himself beside it.
When a man tells his fellow-traveller that he means to go his own road—that companionship has no tie upon him—he virtually declares the partnership dissolved; and while Lockwood sat reflecting over this, he was also canvassing with himself how far he might have been to blame in provoking this hasty resolution.