“You are very selfish,” pursued Mr Gray. “Providence intends you to be wealthy, and to help all your relatives. Providence means you to be a blessing and assistance to your family. You prefer to be a hindrance, a clog, a kill-joy, a spoil-all. Your mother is delicate, your father poor, your brothers without any opening in life. You can remove the thorns out of all their paths. You refuse to do this. Why? Because of pride. Providence, in addition to wealth, offers you the best fellow in Christendom for a husband. You won’t even look at him. You refuse to make him happy by becoming his wife, and you leave him in a state of poverty, because he can not inherit the fortune which is offered to him without your assistance. Thousands and tens of thousands of pounds are placed at your feet. What a power they are! what a grand power! But you won’t have anything to say to them, and they go to enrich the Jews, and the Society for Befriending Lame Cats, or some other preposterous charity, I’m sure I can’t say what.” Mr Gray’s voice rose to a perfect storm of indignation as he spoke of the provisions Cousin Geoffrey had made for the spending of his wealth in case I refused to comply with the conditions of his will.
“Well, what am I to do?” I said, when the angry little man paused again for want of breath. “Am I, influenced by the reasons you have mentioned, to lower myself, to have no regard at all for those natural feelings of pride which all girls ought to have, and go up to my almost unknown cousin and beg and pray of him to take pity on me, and allow me to become his wife?”
“Who said you were to do anything of the kind?”
“Please, Mr Gray, what am I to do?”
The lawyer jumped from his chair, rushed over to me, and seized both my hands.
“Now you are reasonable,” he said; “now you are delightful—now you shall listen to my scheme.”
“Please what is your scheme?”
“Listen, listen. In the first place, Tom knows nothing of the conditions of the will.”
“Of course he does not. How could he know?”
“Listen, Miss Rosamund. Tom Valentine shall fall in love with you in the ordinary and orthodox fashion, and shall propose to you in orthodox fashion. And you shall fall in love with him.”