"For the business—not for you, Maurice!"
"He's very anxious to make a model clerk of you; and very much afraid that I shall spoil you. As if I were so dangerous a friend, relative, or acquaintance! Upon my honour, I can't make it out exactly. I've had an idea that I should be just the friend for you. Perhaps the governor is coming round to my way of thinking, at last."
Sidney repeated his past assertions that their positions did not, and could never correspond. Maurice laughed at this as usual.
"Haven't I told you fifty times that I don't care a fig for position, and that a Hinchford is always a Hinchford—i.e., a gentleman? Sidney, you are an incomprehensibility; when you marry that lady to whose attractions you have confessed yourself susceptible, perhaps I shall make you out more clearly."
Sidney's countenance changed a little—he became grave, and his cousin noticed the difference.
"Anything wrong?" was the quick question here.
Sidney was annoyed that he had betrayed himself—he who prided himself upon mastering all emotion when the occasion was necessary.
"Oh! no; everything right, Maurice!" he said with a forced lightness of demeanour; "the folly of an engagement that could end in nothing, discovered in good time, and two romantic beings sobered for their good!"
"Why could it end in nothing?—I don't see."
"Oh! it's a long story," replied Sidney, "and you would not feel interested in it. I was selfish to seek to bind her to a long engagement, and we both thought so, after mature deliberation. I turn off here—Good night!"