“No,” said Lucian, with a light in his handsome face never seen there before.
Mrs Leigh felt as if she might as well argue with a statue. She went to bed in distress and uncertainty, and, early the next morning sent over a message to the Rectory, begging Mr Riddell to come and see her at once. He was an old friend, and his office made her feel it right to consult him besides; and she was a woman who liked sympathy, and always talked freely of her troubles and anxieties.
He came before breakfast was over at Ashfield, and Mrs Leigh, rising, with an eager squeeze of his hand, dismissed her little girls and their governess, and said tearfully—
“My dear Rector, you know everything I would say. I shall leave you with this foolish boy to persuade him, if possible—”
“I can go, mother, if you want to tell the Rector all your objections,” said Lucian. “Anyway I don’t see why you should go away. I have proposed to Miss Haredale, and she has accepted me. The thing is done.”
Lucian turned scarlet as he spoke, and embarrassment gave a certain coldness to his tone. Mr Riddell recognised that he would be hard to move.
“My dear boy,” he said, as Mrs Leigh, in spite of her son’s words, left them alone together, “I think I am sorry that you have been so hasty. Three weeks is a very short time.”
“It’s quite long enough,” said Lucian.
“Yes, she is a beautiful girl, Lucian, and as guileless—as—as Psyche herself; and brought up by a good woman. But she is only eighteen, and no man can say what she will grow up to. There will be a very great deal of her, Lucian. She is a great prize. She is rarely beautiful, and she has brains, and is highly strung. She will expect a great deal of life. She does not know at all, yet, what she will need. She has all her growing and her living to do in the future.”
“So have I,” said Lucian. “But one knows very well what one will come to.”