“You will think this an extraordinary beginning; but it is true. I have never lived anywhere else. My marriage, you know, fortunately, has made no difference. Of course I am my father’s heir in everything but what is entailed. It has occurred to us—we have thought that perhaps—”
“What have you thought, Alicia?” he cried, with a sudden, sharp remonstrance in his tone; “that I was just as in former times, ready for anything that you—What have you thought?—that I was in the same position as of old—that there was no one to consult, no one to consider—except my devotion to you?”
“You mistake me altogether,” she cried. “Your devotion to me—which no doubt is ended long ago—was never taken into consideration at all. We thought of an entirely different motive when we talked it over, my father and I. You will remember that I am only asking a question, Edward. I wanted to ask only if a proposal might be made to you, that was all.”
“And what was the motive which you supposed likely to move me?” he said.
He had risen up from his seat, and came and stood by the mantel-piece, leaning on it, and looking down upon her. There was a great commotion in his mind—a commotion of the old and of the new. He had grown soft and tender a few minutes before, feeling himself ready to do anything for her which a lady could ask of a man. But now, when it appeared to him that she had gone far beyond that sphere, and was about to ask from him the sacrifice of everything—his property, his inheritance, the fortune of his children—a sudden hot fountain of indignation seemed to have risen within the man. He felt as the knight did in the poem when his lady lightly threw her glove among the lions—an impulse to give her what she asked, to fling it in her face, doing her behest in contempt of the unwomanly impulse which had tempted her to strain her power so far. This was how he felt. No reasonable sentiment of self-defense, but a burning temptation to take his heirship, his hopes, all that made the future tolerable, and fling them with an insult in her face.
“Edward,” she said, “I came to you in confidence that you would hear me—that you would let me speak plainly without offense; I mean none,” she said, with agitation. “But we have both come to a reasonable age, and surely we may talk to each other without wounding each other—about circumstances which everybody can see.”
“Speak freely, Alicia. I only want to know what you wish, and what there is in me to justify the proposal, whatever it may be, that you have come to make.”
“I have begun wrong,” she said, with a gesture of disappointment. “It is difficult to find the right words. Will you be angry if I say it is no secret that you—that we—for Heaven’s sake don’t think I mean to hurt you—plainly, that I, with all my father can leave, will be in a better position for keeping up Penton than you who are the heir-at-law.”
He stood for some time with his arm on the mantel-piece making no answer, looking down at the faint redness of a fire which had almost burned out.
“So that’s all,” he said at last, with the tremulous note of a sudden laugh; and drawing a chair close up to it, began to gather together the scraps of half-consumed wood into a blaze. All that he produced was a very feeble momentary glimmer, which leaped up and then died out. He threw down the poker with another short laugh. “Significant,” he said, “symbolical! so that is all, Alicia? You are sure you want no more?”