“Circumstances have occurred, since I had last the honour of seeing you, which make it impossible that I should ever think of you more.
“JOHN WRIGHT.
“P.S. My cousin, Marvel, thanks you for your note. Before you receive this, he will have left York wiser than he came into it by fifty guineas and more.”
“Wiser by more than fifty guineas, I hope,” said Marvel, as he rode out of town, early in the morning.
“I have been on the point of being finely taken in! I’m sure this will be a lesson to me as long as I live. I shall never forget your good-nature, and steadiness to me, Wright. Now, if it had not been for you, I might have been married to this jade; and have given her and her brother every thing I’m worth in the world. Well, well, this is a lesson I shall remember. I’ve felt it sharply enough. Now I’ll turn my head to my business again, if I can. How Goodenough would laugh at me if he knew this story. But I’ll make up for all the foolish things I have done yet before I die; and I hope, before I die, I may be able to show you, cousin Wright, how much I am obliged to you: that would be greater joy to me even than getting by my own ingenuity my uncle Pearson’s ten thousand pound legacy. Do, Wright, find out something I can do for you, to make amends for all the trouble I’ve given you, and all the time I have made you waste: do, there’s a good fellow.”
“Well, then,” said Wright, “I don’t want to saddle you with an obligation. You shall pay me in kind directly, since you are so desirous of it. I told you I was in love: you shall come with me and see my mistress, to give me your opinion of her. Every man can be prudent for his neighbour: even you no doubt can,” added Wright, laughing. Wright’s mistress was a Miss Banks, only daughter to a gentleman who had set up an apparatus for manufacturing woad. Mr. Banks’s house was in their way home, and they called there. They knocked several times at the door, before any one answered: at last a boy came to hold their horses, who told them that Mr. Banks was dead, and that nobody could be let into the house. The boy knew nothing of the matter, except that his master died, he believed, of a sort of a fit; and that his young mistress was in great grief: “which I’m mortal sorry for,” added he: “for she be’s kind hearted and civil spoken, and moreover did give me the very shoes I have on my feet.”
“I wish I could see her,” said Wright; “I might be some comfort to her.”
“Might ye so, master? If that the thing be so,” said the boy, looking earnestly in Wright’s face, “I’ll do my best endeavours.”
He ran off at full speed through the back yard, but returned to learn the gentleman’s name, which he had forgotten to ask; and presently afterwards he brought his answer. It was written with a pencil, and with a trembling hand:
“My dear Mr. Wright, I cannot see you now: but you shall hear from me as soon as I am able to give an answer to your last.