“Oh! you will get over that dislike,” returned Mr Vaughan, “once you go into fashionable society. Most young ladies do. There is no harm in balls—after a girl gets married, and her husband goes with her, to take care of her—no harm whatever. But now, Kate,” continued the Custos, betraying a certain degree of nervous impatience, “we must come to an understanding. Mr Smythje is waiting.”
“For what is he waiting, papa?”
“Tut! tut! child,” said Mr Vaughan, slightly irritated by his daughter’s apparent incapacity to comprehend him. “Surely you know! Have I not as good as told you? Mr Smythje is going to—to offer you his heart and hand; and—and to ask yours in return. That is what he is waiting to do. You will not refuse him?—you cannot: you must not!”
Loftus Vaughan would have spoken more gracefully had he omitted the last phrase. It had the sound of a command, with an implied threat; and, jarring upon the ear of her to whom it was addressed, might have roused a spirit of rebellion. It is just possible that such would have been its effect, had it been spoken on the evening before the Smythje ball, instead of the morning after.
The incidents occurring there had extinguished all hope in the breast of the young Creole that she should ever share happiness with Herbert Vaughan—had, at the same time, destroyed any thought of resistance to the will of her father; and, with a sort of apathetic despair, she submitted herself to the sacrifice which her father had determined she should make.
“I have told you the truth,” said she, gazing fixedly in his face, as if to impress him with the idleness of the arguments he had been using. “I cannot give Mr Smythje my heart; I shall tell him the same.”
“No—no!” hastily rejoined the importunate parent; “you must do nothing of the kind. Give him your hand; and say nothing about your heart. That you can bestow afterwards—when you are safe married.”
“Never, never!” said the young girl, sighing sadly as she spoke. “I cannot practise that deception. No, father, not even for you. Mr Smythje shall know all; and, if he choose to accept my hand without my heart—”
“Then you promise to give him your hand?” interrupted the Custos, overjoyed at this hypothetical consent.
“It is you who give it; not I, father.”