"I wish it did lie with me: I would do my best to find another spot and spare them. The company have fixed upon the site, Low has given his concurrence, and there's no more to be said or done. I am very sorry, but it has been no doing of mine. Will you go with me to the doctor's, Mark?"
Marcus hesitated, and then said he had rather not call that evening.
"Why?" asked Oswald.
"Well--the fact is,--I don't see why I may not tell you,--I have been asking the doctor this afternoon for Caroline. He did not give me a positive answer, one way or the other; and I don't think it will look well to press a visit upon them just now."
Oswald Cray's was not a demonstrative countenance: a self-controlled man's rarely is: but certainly it exhibited marked surprise now, and he gazed at his brother inquiringly.
"You are surely not thinking of marrying?"
"Yes, I am. Why should I not think of it?"
"But what have you to marry upon? What means?"
"Oh--I must get Dr. Davenal to increase my share. By a word he dropped this afternoon when we were talking of it, I fancy he would do it: would increase it to four hundred a-year. We might manage upon that."
Oswald Cray made no immediate reply. He, the self-reliant man, would have felt both pain and shame at the very thought of marrying upon the help of others.