Ernest rose in great wrath. “I tell you what it is, Eva, if I am not good enough to acknowledge, I am not good enough to have anything to do with. A boy, indeed! I am one-and-twenty; that is full age. Confound it all! you are always talking about my being so young, just as though I should not get old fast enough. Can’t you wait for me a year or two?” he asked, with tears of mortification in his eyes.
“O Ernest, Ernest, do be reasonable, there’s a dear; what is the good of getting angry and making me wretched? Come and sit down here, dear, and tell me, am I not worth a little patience? There is not the slightest possibility, so far as I can see, of our getting married at present; so the question is, if it is of any use to trumpet out an engagement that will only make us the object of a great deal of gossip, and which, perhaps, your uncle would not like?”
“O, by Jove!” he said, “that reminds me;” and sitting down beside her again, he told her the story of the interview with his uncle. She listened in silence.
“This is all very bad,” she said, when he had finished.
“Yes, it is bad enough; but what is to be done?”
“There is nothing to be done at present.”
“Shall I make a clean breast of it to him?”
“No, no, not now; it will only make matters worse. We must wait, dear. You must go abroad for a couple of months, as you had arranged, and then when you come back we must see what can be arranged.”
“But, my dearest, I cannot bear to leave you; it makes my heart ache to think of it.”
“Dear, I know that it is hard; but it must be done. You could not stop here now very well without speaking about our—our engagement, and to do that would only be to bring your uncle’s anger on you. No, you had better go away, Ernest, and meanwhile I will try to get into Mr. Cardus’s good graces, and, if I fail, then when you come back we must agree upon some plan. Perhaps by that time you will take your uncle’s view of the matter and want to marry Dorothy. She would make you a better wife than I shall, Ernest, my dear.”