'It would be the safest foundation.'
'Yes, if he were ten years older, and had seen the world; but in these things he is like a child, and it would be dangerous to influence him. Do not take it to heart; you ought to be contented, for I saw nothing so plainly as that he loves nobody half so well as you. Only be patient with him.'
'You are the same Mary as ever,' he said, softened; and she left him, hoping that she had secured a favourable audience for his son, who soon appeared at the window, somewhat like a culprit.
'I could not help it!' he said.
'No; but you may set a noble aim before you—you may render yourself worthy of her esteem and confidence, and in so doing you will fulfil my fondest hopes.'
'I asked her to try me, but they would make no conditions. I am sorry this could not be, since you wished it.'
'If you are not sorry on your own account, there are no regrets to be wasted on mine.'
'Candidly, father,' said Louis, 'much as I like her, I cannot be sorry to keep my youth and liberty a little longer.'
'Then you should never have entered on the subject at all,' said Lord Ormersfield, beginning to write a letter; and poor Louis, in his praiseworthy effort not to be reserved with him, found he had been confessing that he had not only been again making a fool of himself, but, what was less frequent and less pardonable, of his father likewise. He limped out at the window, and was presently found by his great-aunt, reading what he called a raving novel, to see how he ought to have done it. She shook her head at him, and told him that he was not even decently concerned.
'Indeed I am,' he replied. 'I wished my father to have had some peace of mind about me, and it does not flatter one's vanity.'