"You have? Then I hope your opinion is changed."
"So far from it, I prophesy that his attentions to you—which have been marked of late—will visibly decrease, until they relapse into mere insignificance. And all because I casually remarked that your father's estate, being entailed, and he being in debt, you and your sisters were portionless."
"And you suppose him capable of—oh! this is too bad. It is ungenerous."
"My dear Blanche, I may be wrong, but I fear I am not; let me not, however, be condemned, till the event condemns me. Watch him!"
"You shall own you have calumniated him; the event shall prove it," she said with great warmth.
A dark shade passed across his brow, and he rowed rapidly on. Not another word passed between them.
CHAPTER XIII.
HOW A LOVER VACILLATES.
Cecil's reflections had not been cheering. Although he felt himself too much in love with Blanche to give her up because she was portionless, he was, at the same time, too well aware of his own slender resources to think of marrying upon them. Bred to luxurious habits, he was not one by whom poverty could be lightly treated.
The more he reflected, the more urgent it appeared to him that he should conquer his passion, and save himself from perdition. Could Captain Heath have read what was passing in his rival's mind, he would have smiled grimly at this verification of his suspicions, and rejoiced in the success of an experiment which removed that rival from his path.