"I'd be able to live the life I want, then. Learn to sing, have lovely dresses, and travel about. I'm not thinking only of his money, but don't you think people who marry on nothing are fools and selfish? A woman who marries a man who is only able to keep her and her children in starvation is a fool, and a man who wants a woman to suffer what wives have to, and drudge in poverty, is a selfish brute—that's what I've always thought. As for gassing about love when there's no comfort to keep it alive, that's about as foundationless as we, always being supposed to think men our superiors, even the ones a blind idiot could see are inferior."
"Are you going to marry him?"
"I want to, but what on earth am I to do with 'Dora' Eweword?"
"Break his heart to keep Ernest's together?"
"Break his heart! It's the style to break, isn't it? He can have Dora Cowper or Ada Grosvenor, they both want him. If grandma got wind of the situation though, she'd put my pot on properly. She'd carry on like fury, and let me have neither of them—that would be the end of it. I can't make out why I fooled with that 'Dora' at all. I'll write and ask Ernest to give me a week;" and with her characteristic promptitude she sat down, and favoured a style as unadorned as that of the knight himself.
"Dear Mr Ernest,—Your letter received. I care for you, but cannot give you a definite answer at once. There may be obstacles in the way of accepting your kind offer; if you will give me a week to consider matters, I will answer you definitely then.—Yours with love,
Dawn."
As she got into bed she said with a happy giggle, "He says he loved me from the first day he saw me, and you thought he only came to see you!"
"Well, my dear, you can't expect people whose hearts are broken from over-work, and whose hair is grey from want of love, to be as quick as beautiful young ladies whose affairs have come to a happy head with a splendid young knight;" and what I inwardly thought was, that at all events I had discovered the knight's symptoms long before he had done so.
"Would you like Mr Ernest and me to marry?" she asked.