“A woman,—who could she be? Not Sally Talbot; not Lady Jane Rivers; not—”
“Kitty Dwyer; and I think you might have guessed her before, Watty! It is rather late, to be sure, to think of it; but my belief is that you ought to have married that girl.”
“She refused me, Dan. She refused me,” said my father, growing red, between shame and a sense of irritation.
“There 's a way of asking that secures a refusal, Watty. Don't tell me Kitty was not fond of you. I ought to know, for she told me so herself.”
“She told you so,” cried my father, slowly.
“Ay, did she. It was in the summer-house, down yonder. You remember the day you gave a great picnic to the Carbiniers; they were ordered off to India, and you asked them out here to a farewell breakfast. Well, I did n't know then how badly matters were with me. I thought at least that I could scrape together some thirteen or fourteen hundreds a year; and I thought, too, that I had a knowledge of the world that was worth as much more, and that Kitty Dwyer was just the girl that suited me. She was never out of humor, could ride anything that ever was backed, did n't care what she wore, never known to be sick, sulky, nor sorry for anything; and after a country dance that lasted two hours, and almost killed everybody but ourselves, I took her a walk round the gardens, and seated her in the summer-house there. I need n't tell all I said,” continued he, with a sigh. “I believe I could n't have pleaded harder for my life, if it was at stake; but she stopped me short, and, squeezing my hand between both of hers, said: 'No, Dan, this cannot be, and you are too generous to ask me why.' But I was not! I pressed her all the more; and at last—not without seeing a tear in her eye, too—I got at her secret, and heard her say your name. I swore by every saint we could either of us remember, never to tell this to man or mortal living; and I suppose, in strict fact, I ought n't to do so now; but, of course, it 's the same thing as if you were dead, and you, I well know, will never breathe it again.”
“Never!” said my father, and sat with his head on his hand, unable to utter a word more.
“Poor Kitty!” said Dan, with a heavy sigh, while he balanced his spoon on the edge of his teacup. “I half suspect she is the only one in the world that you ever seriously wronged, and yet she is the very first to uphold you.”
“But you are unjust, Dan,—most unjust,” cried my father, warmly. “There was a kind of flirtation between us—I don't deny it,—but nothing more than is always going forward in this free-and-easy land of ours, where people play with their feelings as they do with their fortunes, and are quite astonished to discover, some fine morning, that they have fairly run through both one and the other. I liked her, and she perhaps liked me, somewhat better than any one else that she met as often. We got to become very intimate; to feel that in the disposal of our leisure hours—which meant the livelong day—we were excessively necessary to each other; in fact, that if our minds were not quite alike, our tastes were. Of course, before one gets that far, one's friends, as they call themselves, have gone far beyond it. There's no need of wearying you with detail. Somebody, I 'm sure I forget who it was, now took occasion to tell me that I was behaving ill to Kitty; that unless I really intended seriously,—that's the paraphrase for marriage,—my attentions were calculated to do her injury. Ay, by Jove! your match-making moralists talk of a woman as they would of a horse, and treat a broken flirtation as if it were a breach of warranty. I was, I own it, not a little annoyed at the unnecessary degree of interest my friends insisted on taking in my welfare; but I was not fool enough to go to war with the world single-handed, so I seemed to accept the counsel, and went my way. That same day, I rode out with Kitty. There was a large party of us, but by some chance we found ourselves side by side and in an avenue of the wood. Quite full as my mind was of the communication of the morning, I could not resist my usual impulse, which was to talk to her of any or every thing that was uppermost in my thoughts. I don't mean to say, Dan, that I did so delicately, or even becomingly, for I confess to you I had grown into that kind of intimacy whose gravest fault is that it has no reserve. I 'm quite certain that nothing could be worse in point of taste or feeling than what I said. You can judge of it from her reply: 'And are you such a fool, Walter, as to cut an old friend for such silly gossip?' I blundered out something in defence of myself,—floundered away into all kinds of stupid, unmeaning apologies, and ended by asking her to marry me. Up to that moment we were conversing in all the freedom of our old friendship, not the slightest reserve on either side; but no sooner had I uttered these words than she turned towards me with a look so sad and so reproachful, I did not believe that her features could have conveyed the expression, while, in a voice of deepest emotion, she said: 'Oh, Walter, this from you!' I was brute enough—there 's only one word for it—to misunderstand her; and, full of myself and the splendid offer I had made her, and my confounded amour propre, I muttered something about the opinion of the world, the voice of friends, and so on. 'Tell your friends, then,' said she, and with such an emphasis on the word,—'tell your friends that I refused you!' and giving her mare a tremendous cut of the whip, she dashed off at speed, and was up with the others before I had even presence of mind to follow her.”
“You behaved devilish badly,—infamously. If I 'd been her brother, I'd have shot you like a dog!” cried Dan, rising, and walking the room.