"With my father to give me courage, I can bear this!"
"That's—that's—that's well, my lad. Keep strong—oh! Lord have mercy upon us!—keep strong, my boy!"
"I have been fighting hard to get the firm straight—I have been abroad to the foreign branch, working night and day there, my last chance and my employer's. I had a hope once of success, till the markets fell suddenly, and swamped everything—our weakness could not stand against anything new and unforeseen, and so we—smashed! It will be all over town to-morrow—but it was a good fight whilst it lasted."
"It's very unfortunate news," said Mr. Wesden.
"I'm not afraid for myself," said Sidney, proudly; "I think that with time, and health—ah! I must not forget that—I shall work my way somewhere, and to something in good time. But I shan't climb to greatness all of a sudden; and it may happen that at forty—even fifty years of age—I may be no better off than I am now. That I'm disappointed is natural enough, for I know money's value, and perhaps it was a little too near my heart, and this is my lesson; but the disappointment of losing you, Harriet—of giving up that chance, as any honourable man should—is the one loss which staggers me, and will be the hardest to surmount. I thought that I would make a clean breast of it, and begin my one-and-twentieth year free, as land-agents say, of all encumbrances."
It was a poor attempt at facetiæ—a very weak effort to carry things off with a high hand, like a Hinchford. But he played his part well; he did not break down; he confessed his inability to keep a wife, or think of a wife, and he spoke out like one who had reached man's estate, and felt strong to bear man's troubles.
Mr. Wesden stared at Sidney long after he had concluded, and a pause had followed the outburst; Harriet Wesden, with a heightened colour, looked down at her white hands so tightly clasped together in her lap, and thought that it was a strange explanation—a strange hour for an explanation which he might have chosen his time to give to her alone. Surely she might have been offered an opportunity of giving an answer also, and spared that embarrassment with which his thoughtlessness had afflicted her. Could her father answer for her, as well as for himself!
Mr. Wesden delivered his reply, after several moments' grave deliberation.
"Mr. Sidney," said he, "I always did hate anything kept back, and doubted the honesty of anybody keeping it. The truth, however hard it may be to tell, will always bear the light upon it, I'm inclined to think."
Harriet winced.