“You have come here to plead the cause of Colonel Gwyn?” said she.
“Yes,” he replied. “I believe him to be a good man. I believe that as his wife you would be safe from all the dangers which surround such a girl as you in the world.”
“Ah! my dear friend,” she cried. “I have seen enough of the world to know that a woman is not sheltered from the dangers of the world from the day she marries. Nay, is it not often the case that the dangers only begin to beset her on that day?”
“Often—often. But it would not be so with you, dear child—at least, not if you marry Colonel Gwyn.”
“Even if I do not love him? Ah! I fear that you have become a worldly man all at once, Dr. Goldsmith. You counsel a poor weak girl from the standpoint of her matchmaking mother.”
“Nay, God knows, my sweet Mary, what it costs me to speak to you in this way. God knows how much sweeter it would be for me to be able to think of you always as I think of you know—bound to no man—the dearest of all my friends. I know it would be impossible for me to occupy the same position as I now do in regard to you if you were married. Ah! I have seen that there is no more potent divider of friendship than marriage.”
“And yet you urge upon me to marry Colonel Gwyn?”
“Yes—yes—I say I do think it would mean the assurance of your—your happiness—yes, happiness in the future.”
“Surely no man ever had so good a heart as you!” she cried. “You are ready to sacrifice yourself—I mean you are ready to forego all the pleasure which our meeting, as we have been in the habit of meeting for the past four years, gives you, for the sake of seeing me on the way to happiness—or what you fancy will be happiness.”
“I am ready, my dear child; you know what the sacrifice means to me.”