“Had you any suspicion of this?”
“Not definitely. Pray don’t say a word that can develop it now.”
“He is all the worthier.”
“Most true; but we do not know that there is any feeling on his side, and if there were, Sydney is much too young for it to be safe to interfere with conventionalities. An expressed attachment would be very bad for both of them at present.”
“Should you have objected if he had still been going to India?”
“I would have prevented an engagement, and should have regretted her knowing anything about it. The wear of such waiting might be too great a strain on her.”
“Possibly,” said Fordham. “And should you consider this other profession an insuperable objection?”
“Certainly not, if he goes on as I think he will; but such success cannot come to him for many years, and a good deal may happen in that time.”
Poor Lucas! He would have been much cheered could he have heard the above conversation instead of Cecil’s wrath, which, like his sister’s, worked a good deal like madness on the brain.
Mr. Evelyn chose to resent the slight to his family, and the ingratitude to his uncle, in thus running counter to their wishes, and plunging into what the young aristocrat termed low life. He did not spare the warning that it would be impossible to keep up an intimacy with one who chose to “grub his nose in hospitals and dissecting rooms.”