"I'd not cherish it, Charlotte."
"You would not, I know. Tell me," she added, with quite a gust of passion in voice and eye, "would you like to see your fine, attractive, noble son, thrown away upon Lucy Arkell?"
"My head is as bad as it can be, Charlotte; I wish you'd not worry me. I think I must be going to have some fever."
"He might marry half Westerbury. With his good looks, his education, his fine prospects——"
"Yes, do put in them," interrupted Mr. Arkell. "Very fine they are, in the present aspect of affairs."
"Affairs will get good again. I don't believe the half that's said about the badness of trade. You have made a good thing of it," she added significantly.
"Pretty well; I and my father before me. But those times have gone by for ever."
"I don't believe it; I believe the trade will revive again and be as lucrative as before; and Travice will be able to maintain a home such as we have maintained. It is a fine prospect, I don't care how you may deny it in your gloom; and I say that Travice, enjoying it, might marry half the desirable girls in Westerbury."
"He'd be taken up for bigamy if he did."
"Can't you be serious?" she angrily asked. "Whereas, if he got enthralled by that bane, Lucy Arkell, and——Good patience, here she is!" broke off Mrs. Arkell, as her eyes fell on the courtyard. "The impudence of that! Not half an hour in the town, and to come here!"