"Me! I!--O papa, what are you saying?"
Her father approached her, put one arm round her waist, and took her hand in his. He seldom caressed his daughter, and she instinctively shrunk from the encircling arm, as if a danger threatened her; but he held her firmly, and she stood still and listened.
"I daresay you can't understand it, Kate, but it's quite true for all that; and you know you are a doosid sensible girl, and doosid lucky too, I can tell you." Mr. Guyon was recovering himself. "Now look here. You've always lived like a lady--a long way better than many ladies, by Jove--and you don't know what difficulties and poverty mean; and it will be your own fault if you do know now, or ever. You've no fortune, Kate; and a girl who hasn't can't choose for herself--that's a fact. Men can't and won't marry without money; and though you don't know much of the world, except the ball, supper, promenade, and park side of it, Katie, I daresay you know enough of it not to deny that. You don't know much of Streightley; and I daresay he's not the sort of fellow you would fancy if you did know ever so much of him. But then, you see, the sort of fellow you would fancy can't marry you, because you have no money, or won't, which comes to the same thing,--at all events doesn't--" Here Katharine released herself, and sat down. Still she turned her white face and attentive eyes steadfastly upon him, and showed no sign of emotion, save the occasional twitching of the hand which she laid upon the table. Immensely reassured by her quietness, Mr. Guyon went on, quite cheerily:
"It's all nonsense thinking about love-matches in these days; and indeed at any time I don't think they turned out well. Now, Kate, this is the real fact. If you don't marry Streightley, who is a first-rate fellow, and immensely rich, and ready to do all sorts of generous and noble things, in addition to giving me time to look about me until I can pay him the money I owe him, absolute ruin is staring me in the face, and you too. Don't speak, Kate; don't say any thing in a hurry; and don't say I ask you to marry Streightley for my sake; but just listen to the alternative. Well, suppose that you determine not to accept Streightley;--and remember, beautiful and admired as you are, he is the first man who has ever asked you to marry him--a pretty strong proof, I think, of the truth of my statement that men won't marry without money, especially if you will take the trouble to count up the number of ugly heiresses married since you have been out, and to several of your own admirers too;--we all go to smash here; I must shift for myself the best way I can--get off abroad, and escape imprisonment; though I can't escape disgrace--and never hope to show my face in England again. And as for you, Katie, don't think me hard or cruel--I must tell you the truth; I must tell you the whole truth, that you may know what you really reject or accept. I see nothing for you but becoming a companion to a lady--which I take it is the most infernal kind of white slavery going--or being dependent on the charity of Lady Henmarsh. You can't live with your aunt, because she is going to live with her daughter; and you can't come abroad with me, for many reasons, the chief being that I could not afford to take you. Cousin Hetty is very pleasant and nice now, and a capital chaperone; but you are, as I said before, a doosid sensible girl, and I daresay you can guess what cousin Hetty would be to a poor relation, with a shady father, living on her charity,--so I won't dwell upon that."
He paused a little, but still she did not speak. Still she looked at him, her face white, her lips firmly closed, and the hand on the table twitching occasionally. Once or twice there was a sound in her throat as if she swallowed with difficulty, but she uttered no word. Mr. Guyon felt exceedingly hot and uncomfortable, but he went on, less glibly perhaps, and looking rather over than at her.
"The other side of the medal is this, Katie. You have the opportunity of marrying a rich man, in an honourable and advancing position, so desperately in love with you that you may choose your own manner of life. He is very good-looking and well-bred, and I don't see any reason why you may not like him quite well enough to get on with him as happily as any woman gets on with any man. Let me tell you, my dear, the strength of your position will be incalculably increased by your not being in love with him; in nine cases out of ten a woman in love with her husband bores him horribly, and brings out all the bad points in his temper, which she might never find out, or at all events might easily manage, otherwise. You will have every material of reasonable happiness, and the power of indulging your tastes--and they are not economical, Kate. And now choose for yourself; and remember I don't play the sentimental parent, and urge you to this for my sake. We have always been good friends, Katie, but I don't expect a sacrifice from you; and I don't talk the absurd nonsense of representing a splendid offer like this, involving advantages which no girl in London knows better than yourself how to appreciate, as a fearful trial, affording you an opportunity of performing martyrdom to filial duty."
There was a coarse sneer in his voice, which he would have done well to repress, which was dangerous; but his temper was getting the better of his prudence. Katharine shrunk from the tone, and felt even in that moment of tumultuous emotion that the love she had for her father was but a weak affection. It was dying while he spoke, dying as her fresh knowledge of him was born; it would soon be dead she knew, with that other love now for ever lost to her; and only the hopeless pain, the weariness of contempt, would live where the two honest natural affections had sprung up, to be blighted. Mutual avoidance, something like mutual fear, was in the faces that looked at each other, and were so strangely like, now that the expression of each was one of its worst. With no enviable sensations Mr. Guyon waited for Katharine to speak. She rose from her seat before she did so; then she said:
"Mr. Streightley does not imagine that I entertain any feeling of regard for him, I suppose?"
This was a puzzling question, and Mr. Guyon allowed the embarrassment it caused him to be evident.
"Except as a friend of mine, and--" he stammered.