“You are extremely ungrateful. Haven’t I been forming her for you?”
“She needed no forming. She has never been less than a lady—simple and straightforward—never affecting to be rich when she was poor—or to be smarter than her surroundings warranted.”
“Yes, yes, she is perfect, that is understood. She is the betrothed of yesterday, a stage of being which touches the seraphic. But what will you do with her father, and what will you do with her sisters?”
“Her sisters are very good girls, and I hope to treat them in a not unbrotherly fashion. As for her father—there, though the obligation is small, I grant the difficulty may be great. However, I shall know how to cope with it. No miner ever thought to get gold without some intermixture of quartz. The Colonel shall be to me as the gold-digger’s quartz. I shall get rid of him as speedily as I can.”
Through all that Easter week Vansittart lived in the blissful dream which beginneth every man’s betrothal. At such a time as this the dumpiest damsel of the milkmaid type is as fair as she who brought slaughter and burning upon Troy; but for Vansittart’s abject condition there was the excuse of undeniable beauty, and a charm of manner which even village gossip had never disputed. The young ladies who condemned the Miss Marchants en bloc as “bad style” had been fain to confess that Eve had winning ways, which made one almost forgive her cheap boots and mended gloves.
Vansittart was happy. He had promised to join his mother in Charles Street on the Wednesday after Easter; but he wrote to her apologetically on Tuesday, deferring his arrival till the beginning of the following week—and the beginning of a week is a term so lax that it is sometimes made to mean Wednesday.
He was utterly happy. His mother’s letter received on Tuesday morning was grave and kindly, and in no way damped his ardour.
“You have been so good a son to me, my dear Jack, that I should be hard and ungrateful if I murmured at your choice, although that choice has serious drawbacks in surrounding circumstances. You are too honest and frank and true yourself not to be able to distinguish the difference between realities and semblances. I do not doubt, therefore, that your pretty Eve is all you think her. She certainly is a graceful and gracious creature, with a delicate prettiness of the wild rose type, which I prefer greatly to the azalea or the camellia order of beauty. She cannot fail to love you—nor can she fail to be deeply grateful to you for having rescued her from shabby surroundings and a neglectful father. God grant that this step which you have taken—the most solemn act in a man’s life—may bring you the happiness which the marriage of true minds must always bring.”
There was much more, the outpouring of a mother’s love, which ran away with the mother’s pen, and covered three sheets of paper; but even this long letter did not suffice without a postscript.