Thomas, wretched creature, dallied with his father's proposal. He did not intend accepting it, but the very idea of marrying a rich, fashionable girl like that, with a knight for a father, flattered him. Still more was he excited at the notion, the very possibility of wearing a uniform. And what might he not do with so much money? Then, when the thought of Lucy came, he soothed his conscience by saying to himself, "See, how much I must love her when I am giving up all this for her sake!" Still his thoughts hovered about what he said he was giving up. He went to bed on Sunday night, after a very pathetic sermon from Mr. Simon, with one resolution, and one only, namely, to go to the riding-school in Finsbury on Monday night.
But something very different was waiting him.
CHAPTER XXXII.
AN EXPLOSION.
The whole ground under Thomas's feet was honey-combed and filled with combustible matter. A spark dropped from any, even a loving hand, might send everything in the air. It needed not an enemy to do it.
Lucy Burton had been enjoying a delightful season of repose by the sea-side. She had just enough to do with and for the two children to gain healthy distraction to her thinking. But her thinking as well as her bodily condition grew healthier every day that she breathed the sea air. She saw more and more clearly than ever that things must not go on between her and Thomas as they were now going on. The very scent of the sea that came in at her bed-room window when she opened it in the morning, protested against it; the wind said it was no longer endurable; and the clear, blue autumn sky said it was a shame for his sake, if not for her own. She must not do evil that good might come; she must not allow Thomas to go on thus for the sake even of keeping a hold of him for his good. She would give him one chance more, an if he did not accept it, she would not see him again, let come of it what would. In better mood still, she would say, "Let God take care of that for him and me." She had not written to him since she came: that was one thing she could avoid. Now, she resolved that she would write to him just before her return, and tell him that the first thing she would say to him when she saw him would be—had he told his father? and upon his answer depended their future. But then the question arose, what address she was to put upon the letter; for she was not willing to write either to his home or to the counting-house for evident reasons. Nor had she come to any conclusion, and had indeed resolved to encounter him once more without having written, when from something rather incoherently expressed in her grandmother's last letter, which indeed referred to an expected absence of Mr. Stopper, who was now the old lady's main support, she concluded, hastily, I allow, that Mr. Worboise was from home, and that she might without danger direct a letter to Highbury.
Through some official at the Court of Probate, I fancy that Mr. Worboise had heard of a caveat having been entered with reference to the will of Mr. Richard Boxall, deceased. I do not know that this was the case, but I think something must have occurred to irritate him against those whom he, with the law on his side, was so sorely tempted to wrong. I know that the very contemplation of wrong is sufficient to irritate, and that very grievously, against one thus contemplated; but Lucy would have been a very good match, though not equal to Miss Hubbard, even in Mr. Worboise's eyes. On the other hand, however, if he could but make up, not his mind, but his conscience, to take Boxall's money, he would be so much the more likely to secure Miss Hubbard's; which, together with what he could leave him, would make a fortune over two hundred thousand—sufficient to make his son somebody. If Thomas had only spoken in time, that is, while his father's conscience still spoke, and before he had cast eyes of ambition toward Sir Jonathan's bankers! All that was wanted on the devil's side now was some personal quarrel with the rightful heirs; and if Mr. Worboise did not secure that by means of Mr. Sargent's caveat, he must have got it from what had happened on the Monday morning. Before Thomas came down to breakfast, the postman had delivered a letter addressed to him, with the Hastings postmark upon it.
When Thomas entered, and had taken his seat, on the heels of the usual cool Good-morning, his father tossed the letter to him across the table, saying, more carelessly than he felt: