“You will allow me to know you better than you know yourself, dear Kitty,” responded Hugh, with great firmness. “Most naturally, you desire to become better acquainted with the world. You would like to visit the Metropolis, I daresay, and so you shall! You yearn to taste the pleasures enjoyed by those persons who constitute what is known as the ton. It is only proper that you should do so. I venture to prophesy that in a very short space of time you would find many of these pleasures hollow cheats. But do not imagine that if you were to bestow your hand upon me in marriage you would find me opposed to the occasional gratification of your wish for more gaiety than is to be found in a country parish! I am no enemy to the innocent recreation of dancing; I have frequently derived no small enjoyment from a visit to the playhouse; and while I must always hold gaming in abhorrence I am not so bigoted that I cannot play a tolerable game of whist, or quadrille, or bear my part in a private loo-party.”
“Hugh,” interrupted Kitty, “George must have constrained you to make me this offer!”
“I assure you, upon my honour, it is not so!”
“You don’t wish me to be your wife! You—you don’t love me!” she said, in a suffocating voice, and with tears starting to her eyes.
He replied stiffly: “My regard for you is most sincere. Since I was inducted into a parish, not so far distant as to make it impossible for me frequently to visit my great-uncle, I have had ample opportunity of observing you, and to my regard has been added respect. I am persuaded that there is nothing in your character which could preclude your becoming a most eligible wife to any man in orders.”
She gazed up at him in astonishment. “I?” she exclaimed. “When you have been for ever scolding me for levity, and frowning every time I don’t mind my tongue to your liking, and telling me I ought not to be discontented with my lot? How can you talk so?”
He possessed himself of her hand, saying, with a smile: “These are the faults of youth, Kitty. I own, I have tried to guide you: it was never my intention to scold!”
“If you are not constrained by George, it must be by Uncle Matthew!” she declared, snatching her hand away.
“Yes, in some sort,” he replied. “It is hard for you to understand the motives—”
“No, I assure you!”