“And you will comply?”
“I will, till she encroaches on this concession, and dares to hope for a greater. I will, while she avoids my sight, or the giving me any remembrance of her. But if, whether by design or by accident, I ever see or hear from her, that moment, my compliance to her mother’s supplication ceases, and I abandon her once more.”
Sandford sighed. Lord Elmwood continued:
“I am glad her request stopped where it did. I would rather comply with her desires than not; and I rejoice they are such as I can grant with ease and honour to myself. I am seldom now at Elmwood castle; let her daughter go there; the few weeks or months I am down in the summer, she may easily in that extensive house avoid me—while she does, she lives in security—when she does not—you know my resolution.”
Sandford bowed—the Earl resumed:
“Nor can it be a hardship to obey this command—she cannot lament the separation from a parent whom she never knew—” Sandford was going eagerly to prove the error of that assertion, but he prevented him, saying, “In a word—without farther argument—if she obeys me in this, I will provide for her as my daughter during my life, and leave her a fortune at my death—but if she dares—”
Sandford interrupted the menace prepared for utterance, saying, “and you still mean, I suppose, to make Mr. Rushbrook your heir?”
“Have you not heard me say so? And do you imagine I have changed my determination? I am not given to alter my resolutions, Mr. Sandford; and I thought you knew I was not; besides, will not my title be extinct, whoever I make my heir? Could any thing but a son have preserved my title?”
“Then it is yet possible——”
“By marrying again, you mean? No—no—I have had enough of marriage—and Henry Rushbrook I shall leave my heir. Therefore, Sir——”