‘Only three years younger,’ sighed Sophy. ‘But if they were the same age? Do you mean that no one ever ought to marry, if they love ever so much, where the station is different?’
‘No, but that they must not do so lightly, but try the love first to see whether it be worth the sacrifice. If an attachment last through many years of adverse circumstances, I think the happiness of the people has been shown to depend on each other, but I don’t think it safe to disregard disparities till there has been some test that the love is the right stuff, or else they may produce ill-temper, regrets, and unhappiness, all the rest of their lives.’
‘If Gilbert went on for years, mamma?’
‘I did not say that, Sophy.’
‘Suppose,’ continued the eager girl, ‘he went out to Calcutta, and worked these five years, and was made a partner. Then he would be two-and-twenty, nobody could call him too young, and he would come home, and ask papa’s consent, and you—’
‘I should call that constancy,’ said Albinia.
‘And he would take her out to Calcutta, and have no Drurys and Osborns to bother her! Oh! It would be beautiful! I would watch over her while he was gone! I’ll go and tell him!’
‘Stop, Sophy, not from me—that would never do. I don’t think papa would think twenty-two such a great age—’
‘But he would have loved her five years!’ said Sophy. ‘And you said yourself that would be constancy!’
‘True, but, Sophy, I have known a youth who sailed broken-hearted, and met a lady “just in the style” of the former one, on board the steamer—’