“That is all, dear, that is all. I am poor myself, very poor; I wanted money—ha, ha!—capital joke!”
“I think it is more than a joke, my lord,” said Amy, quite seriously.
“No, now, you do not,” said his lordship, rising and taking her hand quite gravely; “I am sure you do not.”
Now it was Amy’s turn to laugh, and she did so right merrily, shaking her finger archly at her lord and saying, “There, that is one to me, as you say. Of course I was joking; but now, really, let us talk seriously.”
“Well, then, my dearest girl,” said his lordship, “if you had been no more than that bailiff’s daughter, if you had been that beggar maid you talk of in the poem, I would have asked you to marry me all the same, and felt blessed with your consent. You know I would,” said his lordship, with passionate earnestness.
“My dear lord,” said Amy, with more warmth than she had ever spoken before.
“What care I for money,” said his lordship, “except for the luxuries it can purchase?—and nothing it could purchase would make me so happy as I am with you.”
Amy held down her head and blushed, not for the love she bore him, but because in that earnest moment she saw a likeness to his brother, and she was grateful for his affection, and remembered how she had sought to inspire the same feeling in another.
“We were talking of my brother,” she said presently, laying down her brushes. “What a pity it is that we are not friendly; it seems so lonely to think that I have no male relative who should stand by my side at our marriage.”
Poor Amy! There was something in that half-threat of Richard Tallant’s about giving her away which had set her thinking and preparing for such a contingency as a demand from her brother to be a wedding guest; and she knew that if he vowed to be there at the ceremony, there was no Ancient Mariner to take him by the button, and keep him away. She almost hated herself for saying a word in favour of one whose conduct ought to have placed him outside all decent society.