“Pshaw! Clara, you are not a fool; you understand me well enough.”
“Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don’t.”
“Your eyes are not so blind that you cannot see when it is to your own interests. But there’s no use in beating about the bush or mincing matters; you know this girl here.”
“What! Susan Hartshorne—that poor idiot?” she exclaimed with well-acted amazement and horror.
“That same and no other,” replied Markworth, positively blushing at being obliged actually to confess his own villainy. “But she’s not an idiot, she’s only foolish—half-silly; and there’s no harm in it,” he continued, half apologetically.
“And you want to marry her?” said the other.
“I do not want to marry her; I mean to marry her!” answered Markworth, quite himself again, and with his usual coolness and sang froid, “and you must help me. Listen! That girl has a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. I am so hard run for money that unless I get some before the present month is up, I shall be ruined—that girl has money which she does not want, and can never feel the need of—do you follow me?—consequently I mean to marry that girl. Nobody cares for her here; her mother, I daresay, will be glad to get rid of her, and the girl will suffer no loss.”
“You will take care of her, I suppose!” said the governess, in her pleasant biting way.
“Yes, I will take care of her—as good care, I daresay, as she gets now.”
“Well, and supposing I lent myself to your purposes, what am I to get—what is to be my share in the transaction? You don’t suppose I am going to assist you and risk my situation for nothing?”