“What is your fear?” she asked.
“Well, I’m rough and unpolished compared with Nasmyth and the rest, but with her large mind she might overlook that. I couldn’t live here as Nasmyth and Clarence do; I’m not rich enough. My wife, if I marry, must come out West with me, and I might have to be away from her for months now and then. I don’t know that I could even establish myself in Victoria, where she would find something resembling your English society. Besides, my small share of prosperity might come to an end; I’m going back now, sooner than I expected, because there are business difficulties to be grappled with.”
Mrs. Gladwyne nodded. She could follow his thought, but after a pause he continued.
“What troubles me most is that Millicent seems so much in harmony with her surroundings. We have nothing like them in Canada—anyway, not in the West. Whether ours are better or worse doesn’t affect the case; they’re widely different. There is much she would have to give up; what I could offer her in place of it would be new and strange, less finished, less refined. Could a woman of your station stand it? Would she suffer from being torn adrift from the associations that surround her here?”
His companion considered. Allowing for his generosity in thinking first of Millicent, he was a little too practical and dispassionate. She did not think he was very greatly in love with the girl as yet, and that was consoling. What Millicent thought she did not know, but in many respects the man was eminently likable. Mrs. Gladwyne had grown fond of him; but that must not be allowed to stand in her son’s way. Clarence came before anybody else.
“I feel my responsibility,” she said slowly. “Would you act on my advice?”
“I think so—it might be hard. Anyway, I’d try.”
She hesitated. The man had won her respect. Had she been wholly free from extraneous influences she might, perhaps, have counseled him to make the venture, but half-consciously she tried to see only the shadows in the picture he had drawn.
“Well,” she answered him, “until two years ago Millicent lived in this house—that must have had its effect on her.”
“Yes,” he agreed; “she shows it. These old places set their stamp on people—it’s very plain on you.”