"Ah, you don't know; all my relations are poor. I know what it is; I know what it would be for a beauty like me."
"You will never be poor or friendless while Lady Ascot lives."
"How long will that be? My home now depends very much on that horse; oh, if I were only a man, I should welcome poverty; it would force me to action."
Charles blushed. Not many days before, Marston and he had had a battle royal, in which the former had said, that the only hope for Charles was that he should go two or three times without his dinner, and be made to earn it, and that as long as he had a "mag" to bless himself with, he would always be a lazy, useless humbug; and now here was a young lady uttering the same atrocious sentiments. He called attention to the prospect.
Three hundred feet below them, Father Thames was winding along under the downs and yellow woodlands, past chalk quarry and grey farm-house, blood-red beneath the setting sun; a soft, rich, autumnal haze was over everything; the smoke from the distant village hung like a curtain of pearl across the valley; and the long, straight, dark wood that crowned the high grey wold, was bathed in a dim purple mist, on its darkest side; and to perfect the air of dreamy stillness, some distant bells sent their golden sound floating on the peaceful air. It was a quiet day in the old age of the year; and its peace seemed to make itself felt on these two wild young birds; for they were silent more than half the way home; and then Charles said, in a low voice—
"Dear Adelaide, I hope you have chosen aright. The time will come when you will have to make a more important decision than any you have made yet. At one time in a man's or woman's life, they say, there is a choice between good and evil. In God's name think before you make it."
"Charles," she said, in a low and disturbed voice, "if a conjurer were to offer to show you your face in a glass, as it would be ten years hence, should you have courage to look?"
"I suppose so; would not you!"
"Oh, no, no, no! How do you know what horrid thing would look at you, and scare you to death? Ten years hence; where shall we be then?"