“And I hope it makes you happy, Tony?”
“Of course it does. It enables me to make my mother happy, and to secure that we shall not be separated. As for myself alone, my habits are simple enough, and my tastes also. My difficulty will be, I suppose, to acquire more expensive ones.”
“It is not a very hard task, I believe,” said she, smiling.
“Not for others, perhaps; but I was reared in narrow fortune, Alice, trained to submit to many a privation, and told too—I 'm not sure very wisely—that such hardships are all the more easily borne by a man of good blood and lineage. Perhaps I did not read my lesson right. At all events, I thought a deal more of my good blood than other people were willing to accord it; and the result was, it misled me.”
“Misled you! and how—in what way?”
“Is it you who ask me this—you, Alice, who have read me such wise lessons on self-dependence, while Lady Lyle tried to finish my education by showing the evils of over-presumption; and you were both right, though I did n't see it at the time.”
“I declare I do not understand you, Tony!” said she.
“Well, I 'll try to be clearer,” said he, with more animation. “From the first day I knew you, Alice, I loved you. I need not say that all the difference in station between us never affected my love. You were too far above me in every gift and grace to make rank, mere rank, ever occur to my mind, though others were good enough to jog my memory on the subject.”
“Others! of whom are you speaking?”
“Your brother Mark, for one; but I don't want to think of these things. I loved you, I say; and to that degree that every change of your manner towards me made the joy or the misery of my life. This was when I was an idle youth, lounging about in that condition of half dependence that, as I look back on, I blush to think I ever could have endured. My only excuse is, however, that I knew no better.”