“Ever since [you was] born,” Mr. Hobbs answered.
“Ah,” remarked Cedric, with a sigh, “I never thought I should have to be an earl then!”
“You think,” said Mr. Hobbs, “there’s no getting out of it?”
“I’m afraid not,” answered Cedric. “My mamma says that my papa would wish me to do it. But if I have to be an earl, I can try to be a good one. I’m not going to be a tyrant.”
His conversation with Mr. Hobbs was a long and serious one. Once having got over the first shock, Mr. Hobbs endeavoured to resign himself to the situation, and before the interview was at an end he had asked a great many questions. As Cedric could answer but few of them, he endeavoured to answer them himself, and explained many things in a way which would probably have astonished Mr. Havisham, could that gentleman have heard it.
But then there were many things which astonished Mr. Havisham. He had known all about the old Earl’s disappointment in his elder sons and all about his fierce rage at Captain Cedric’s American marriage, and he knew how he still hated the gentle little widow and would not speak of her except with bitter and cruel words. He insisted that she was only a common American girl, who had entrapped his son into marrying her because she knew he was an earl’s son. The old lawyer himself had more than half believed this was all true. When he had been driven into the cheap street, and his coupé had stopped before the cheap small house, he had felt actually shocked.
When Mary handed him into the small parlour he looked around it critically. It was plainly furnished but it had a [home-like] look; the few adornments on the walls were in good taste, and about the room were many pretty things which a woman’s hand might have made.
The lawyer’s experience taught him to read people’s characters very shrewdly, and as soon as he saw Cedric’s mother he knew that the old Earl had made a great mistake in thinking her a vulgar, mercenary woman.
When he first told Mrs. Errol what he had come for, she turned very pale.
“Oh!” she said; “will he have to be taken away from me? We love each other so much! He is such a happiness to me! He is all I have.” And her sweet young voice trembled, and the tears rushed into her eyes. “You do not know what he has been to me!” she said.