They met the next morning, and Berwick said: “Is not this a very dangerous precedent we are setting for romantic young people? What if I should turn out to be a swindler or a bigamist?”
“My heart would have prescience of it much sooner than my head,” replied Leonora. “Women are not so often misled into uncongenial alliances by their affections as by their passions or their calculations. The lamb, before he has ever known a wolf, is instinctively aware of an enemy’s presence, even while the wolf is yet unseen. If the lamb stopped to reason with himself, he would be very apt to say, ‘Nonsense! it is no doubt a very respectable beast who is approaching. Why should I imagine he wants to harm me?’”
“But what if I am a wolf disguised as a lamb?” asked Berwick.
“I am so good a judge of tune,” replied Leonora, “that I should detect the sham the moment you tried to cry baa. Nay, a repugnant nature makes itself felt to me by its very presence. There are some persons the very touch of whose hand produces an impression, I generally find to be true, of their character.”
“An ingenious plea!” said Berwick with an affectation of sarcasm. “But it does not palliate your indiscretion.”
“Very well, sir,” replied Leonora, “since you disapprove my precipitancy, we will—”
Berwick interrupted the speech at the very portal of her mouth, by surprising its warders, the lips.
And so it was a betrothal.
How admirably had Mrs. Ridgway behaved through it all! How scrupulous she had been in withholding all intimations of Leonora’s prospective wealth! There were young men among the Ridgways, handsome, accomplished, just entering the hard paths of commercial or professional toil. How easy it would have been to have hinted to some of them, “Secure this young lady, and your fortune is made. Let a hint suffice.” But Mrs. Ridgway was too loyal to her trust to even blindly convey by her demeanor towards Leonora a suspicion that the child was aught more than the dowerless orphan she appeared.
Berwick took a small house in Brooklyn, and prepared for his marriage. Clients were as yet few and poor, but he did not shrink from living on twelve hundred a year with the woman he loved. He was not quite sure that his betrothed was even rich enough to refurnish her own wardrobe. So he delicately broached the question to Mrs. Ridgway. That lady mischievously told him that if he could let Leonora have fifty dollars, it might be convenient. The next day Berwick sent a check for ten times that amount.