“Not I!” he cried. “Though I am pleased to think that I have never had a proof of the exact extent of the rapacity of such as she, yet——”
She laid her hand upon his arm.
“Dear friend, remember that you are speaking of one of us,” she said.
“One of you!—one of—— Heaven forbid! You are as far removed from her as heaven is removed from—from Bath.”
“Nay, nay, she is a woman; and indeed I think that between the best of us and the worst there is no great gulf fixed. If you go to Mrs. Abington on the errand which you have in your mind, you will be putting upon her a gross affront—yes, and upon Dick Sheridan as well, and much will be lost and nothing gained.”
“Then I will not speak to her of money; I will make the appeal to her generosity to set Dick free. Now, you shall not forbid me to make an appeal to her generosity; to do so would be to put an affront on her far more gross than you perceived in my first intention!”
He rose from where he was sitting on the sofa, and began pacing the room thoughtfully. After some time he stopped before her, saying in a low voice:
“Betsy, my child, I fear that I must confess that the design which I had planned out for you, for bringing about your happiness, has been frustrated. My hope was to save you from the evil fate which I feared would overtake you, and the only way that seemed to me to promise well was the one which I took. Was I wrong, dear one, to ask you to give me that promise, knowing, as I did, that it would be a crime on my part to hold you to it?”
“No, no—a thousand times no!” she cried. “You hoped to save me from all that I abhorred, and you succeeded. Indeed you were right. If you had not come to my help, who can tell what might have happened? I knew not in what direction I had a friend who would be true to me, and you know that my father favoured that man, Captain Mathews; he urged upon me to listen to him.... Ah, you saved me!”