"Since you ask—certainly," John replied. "Though, believe me, I give them with the deepest pain. Lord Ravenel, do you not yourself see that our Maud—"
"Wait one moment," he interrupted. "There is not, there cannot be, any previous attachment?"
The supposition made the parents smile. "Indeed, nothing of the kind: she is a mere child."
"You think her too young for marriage, then?" was the eager answer. "Be it so. I will wait, though my youth, alas! is slipping from me; but I will wait—two years, three—any time you choose to name."
John needed not to reply. The very sorrow of his decision showed how inevitable and irrevocable it was.
Lord Ravenel's pride rose against it.
"I fear in this my novel position I am somewhat slow of comprehension. Would it be so great a misfortune to your daughter if I made her Viscountess Ravenel, and in course of time Countess of Luxmore?"
"I believe it would. Her mother and I would rather see our little Maud lying beside her sister Muriel than see her Countess of Luxmore."
These words, hard as they were, John uttered so softly and with such infinite grief and pain, that they struck the young man, not with anger, but with an indefinite awe, as if a ghost from his youth—his wasted youth—had risen up to point out that truth, and show him that what seemed insult or vengeance was only a bitter necessity.
All he did was to repeat, in a subdued manner—"Your reasons?"