“Well, and what did you think and hope?”
“I don’t know,” said the Duke helplessly. “Only that perhaps something would occur—or some other man offer—or—or that it might not be quite yet!”
His uncle looked shrewdly at him. “Have you a tendre for some other female, Gilly?” he asked.
The Duke shook his head.
“Well, I thought you had not, for you have never been in the petticoat-line, but you need not scruple to tell me so if I have been mistaken.” He waited, but the Duke only shook his head again. “Then what is the matter? Be open with me, I beg of you!”
The Duke took out his handkerchief, and pressed it to his lips. “I hardly know. I do not mean to say anything in Harriet’s disparagement! I have always been excessively attached to her, ever since we were children. She is everything that is amiable and obliging. Indeed, she is all compliance and good-nature, and is very pretty besides, but—but I had thought that when I came to marry I should choose awife for myself, a lady for whom I felt—with whom I might be in love, sir!”
“Oho! Here is a high flight!” said his uncle, rather amused. “And where is this fine lady?”
“I have not met one. I—”
“I am happy to hear it, for if any one thing is more to be depended on than another is that she would be quite ineligible! We have all our youthful fancies, Gilly, but it will not answer to be fashioning our lives on them. Now, you are not a schoolboy. You have been about the world a little: I took care that you should do so. You have been presented at Court, you have taken your seat in the House, you have travelled, you have had a season in London. Had you formed an attachment for some female it would not have surprised me in the least, and had your affections become fixed upon an eligible object you would not have found me unreasonable. But although you have met any number of young females of ton, none has succeeded in capturing your fancy. I do not feel that in urging you to come to the point with Ampleforth I am tying you up in matrimony before you have had time to know your own mind.”
“Do you mean that I shall never feel a—a stronger degree of attachment for a female than—than—”