"Do you mean for his offer of marriage, papa?" asked I, with struggling indignation.
"By George, I had forgotten all about that," said he. "We must deliberate a bit. Your mother, too, will expect to be consulted. Take the letter upstairs to her; or, better still, just say that I want to speak to her myself."
As papa and mamma had not met nor spoken together since his return, I willingly embraced this opportunity of restoring them to intercourse with each other.
"Don't go away, Mary Anne," said James, as I was about to seek my own room, for I dreaded being left alone, and exposed to his unfeeling banter; "I want to speak to you." This he said with a tone of kindness and interest which at once decided me to remain. He wore a look of seriousness, Kitty, that I have seldom, if ever, seen in his features, and spoke in a tone that, to my ears, was new from him.
"Let me be your friend, Mary Anne," said he, "and the better to be so, let me talk to you in all frankness and sincerity. If I say one single word that can hurt your feelings, put it down to the true account,—that I 'd rather do even such than suffer you to take the most eventful step in all your life without weighing every consequence of it Answer me, then, two or three questions that I shall ask you, but as truly and unreservedly as though you were at confession."
I sat down beside him, and with my hand in his.
"Now, first of all, Mary Anne," said he, "do you love this Baron von Wolfenschafer?"
Who ever could answer such a question in one word, Kitty? How seldom does it occur in life that all the circumstances of any man's position respond to the ambitious imaginings of a girl's heart! He may be handsome, and yet poor; he may be rich, and yet low-born; intellectual, and yet his great gifts may be alloyed with infirmities of temper; he may be coldly natured, secret, self-contained, uncommunicative,—a hundred things that one does not like,—and yet, with all these drawbacks, what the world calls an "excellent match."
I believe very few people marry the person they wish to marry. I fancy that such instances are the rarest things imaginable. It is a question of compensation throughout,—you accept this, notwithstanding that; you put up with that, for the sake of this! Of course, dearest, I am rejecting here all belief in the "greatest happiness principle" as a stupid fallacy, that only imposes upon elderly gentlemen when they marry their housekeeper. I speak of the considerations which weigh with a young girl who has moved in society, who knows its requirements, and can estimate all that contributes to what is called a "position."
This little digression of mine will give you to understand what was passing in my mind as James sat waiting for my reply.