“Not to him, Marion.”
“He and I are one in such a matter, papa.”
Ah, there was the strangeness of it! His child’s life had seemed to him no more than an undeveloped bud, some day to expand, but as yet folded securely within its sheath, and suddenly it had shot apart from, was almost opposed to them all. It was a thing so strange that the father, looking at the woman, thought only of the child, and took to his own blindness greater blame than it deserved.
“Well,” he said, sighing, “it is possible, as you say, that I have not acted in the best way for Marmaduke, or indeed for any one.”
“And you will write?”
“To tell the man he is to make Marmaduke his heir!”
“O, he has said it already. Tell him that he must be kinder to him, poor fellow!—that he is thrown away in his present position—”
“I cannot say that,” said the Vicar, with a wavering smile at the childishness of the proposition. And as the idea struck him, he looked keenly at her again. “Child, is this really what you suppose it? Do you care so much for Marmaduke that you are prepared to be his wife? You have been thrown together, you have no experience to guide you, you have seen nothing of the world. I ought to take you about and show you other places,” he added in grave bewilderment.
Marion, who had been going to the door, turned round and laughed.
“It is too late now, papa.”