“Ah! that betrays guilt—consciousness, I should say; for what guilt can there be in a virtuous love?—and rely on it, both the girls shall know all about it. Lucy and I often talk over your matters, Miles; for she loves you as well as your own sister. Ah! my fine fellow, you blush at it, like a girl of sixteen! But, there is nothing to be ashamed of, and there is no occasion for blushes.”
“Well, sir, letting my blushes—the blushes of a shipmaster!—but setting aside my blushes, for mercy's sake what more did you tell Lucy?”
“What more? Why I told her how you had been on a desert island, quite alone as one might say, with Miss Merton, and how you had been at sea, living in the same cabin as it were, for nine months; and it would be wonderful—wonderful, indeed, if two so handsome young persons should not feel an attachment for each other. Country might make some difference, to be sure—”
“And station, sir?—What do you think would be the influence of the difference of station, also?”
“Station!—Bless me, Miles; what difference in station is there between you and Miss Merton; that it should cause any obstacle to your union?”
“You know what it is, sir, as well as I do myself. She is the daughter of an officer in the British army, and I am the master of a ship. You will admit, I presume, Mr. Hardinge, that there is such, a thing as a difference in station?”
“Beyond all question. It is exceedingly useful to remember it; and I greatly fear the loose appointments of magistrates and other functionaries, that are making round the country, will bring all our notions on such subjects into great confusion. I can understand that one man is as good as another in rights, Miles; but I cannot understand he is any better, because he happens to be uneducated, ignorant, or a blackguard.”
Mr. Hardinge was a sensible man in all such distinctions, though so simple in connection with other matters.
“You can have no difficulty, however, in understanding that, in New York, for instance, I should not be considered the equal of Major Merton—I mean socially, altogether, and not in personal merit, or the claims which years give—and of course, not the equal of his daughter?”
“Why—yes—I know what you mean, now. There may be some little inequality in that sense, perhaps; but Clawbonny, and the ship, and the money at use, would be very apt to strike a balance.”