“I see,” said Sir Edward, “that was why you undertook so much. It was scarcely very straightforward, was it, to profess all that interest in the brother when it was the sister you were thinking of all the time?”
“Perhaps it might not be straightforward,” owned the unsuccessful one; “and yet,” after a pause, “it was no pretense. I was interested, if you will let me say so, in—all the family, Sir Edward. I should have been too glad—to be of any use: even if there had been no—even if there had not existed—even if—”
“I see,” said the stern judge again: and then there was a dreadful pause. Circumstances alter much, but not even the advanced views of the nineteenth century can alter the position in which a young lover stands before the father of the girl he loves—a functionary perhaps a little discredited by the march of modern ideas, but who nevertheless has still an enormous power in his hands, a power which the feminine heart continues to believe in, which is certainly able to cause a great deal of discomfort and inconvenience, if nothing else. Rochford stood thoroughly cowed, with his eyes cast down, before this great arbiter of fate, although after a while, as the silence continued, there began to crop up in his mind suggestions, resolutions: how nothing should make him resign his hopes; how only Ally herself could loose the bond between them, how he would take courage to say to the father that however much they respected him his decision would not be absolute, that on the contrary it could be resisted, that the two whose happiness was involved—that the two—the two—words which made his heart jump with a sudden throb in the midst of this horrible uncertainty—would stand against the world together not to be sundered. All these heroic thoughts gathered in his mind as he stood awaiting the tremendous parental decision, which came in a form so utterly unexpected, so bewildering, that he could only gasp, and for a moment could not reply. This was what Sir Edward said:
“You know, I suppose, that my girls will have no money, Rochford?”
“Sir!” cried the lover, with a burst of pent-up breath which seemed to carry away with it the burden of a whole lifetime of care from his soul.
“They will have no money. I am a poor man, and have always been so all my life. If you have not known that before you will have to know it now in your capacity (as you say) of the Penton man of business. To keep up Penton will tax every resource. We shall be rather poorer, my wife thinks, than we have been at the Hook; and as for the girls—”
“Do you mean that that’s all?” cried the young man. “You don’t make any—other objection? What do you think I’m made of? I don’t want any money, Sir Edward. Money! when there is Miss Penton—Ally, if I may call her so. How shall I ever thank you enough? I have plenty of money; it’s not money I want, it’s—it’s—”
Words failed him: he stood and swung Sir Edward’s hand, who looked not without a glow of pleasurable feeling at this young fellow who beamed with gratitude and delight. It is never unpleasant to confer so great a favor. This had not been generally the position in which fate had placed Edward Penton. It had been usually the other way. He had received few blessings, even from the beggars, having so little to give; but an emperor could not have conferred a greater gift than his daughter, a spotless little princess of romance, a creature altogether good and fair and sweet. He felt the water come into his eyes out of that simple sense of munificence and liberal generosity. “I think,” he said, “you’re a good fellow, Rochford, and that you’ll be good to little Ally. She’s too young for anything of the kind, but her mother sees no objection. And she ought to know best.”
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE FATE OF THE CHIFFONIER.
The family of Penton Hook took possession of the great house of Penton in the spring. It need scarcely be said that there were endless consultations, discussions, committees of ways and means of every imaginable kind before this great removal was accomplished. Lady Penton’s first visit to her new home was one which was full of solemnity. It was paid in much state, a visit of ceremony, greatly against the wish of both of the visitors and the visited, before the Russell Pentons withdrew from the great house.