"Is it of me you dare to speak so?" she cried. "Oh, I understand you! When one has been brought up among the Vernons, one knows what things mean. You venture to tell me that Harry is the man!—who else?—but that you would have been so had you been free—the man," cried the girl with blazing eyes, that smote him with lightnings not of a harmless kind, "to pick up out of the dust—me!—like something on the roadside."
"You are very eloquent, my little cousin," said Edward, "not that there is very much in what you say; but your looks and gesture are as fine as ever I saw. After all though, is it called for? When I say that Harry is the man, I do not suppose either that he is worthy of you, or that you think so; but you are a girl, what can you do? They would not let you work, and if you could work, nothing but daily bread would come of it. And, my dear Hester, you want a great deal more than daily bread. You want triumph, power; you want to be as you are by nature, somebody. Oh, yes," he said, going on quietly, waving his hand to avert the angry interruption which was on her lips; "believe me it is so, even if you don't know it. And how can you do this, save by marrying? It does not make anything worse to recognise its real character. You must do this by marrying. Harry is the first man who offers. If you were to wait a little longer you might do better; but you do not feel that you can wait. I do not blame you. I should do the same were I you."
All this was said very quietly, the speaker going on by her side with his eyes turned to the ground, swinging his stick in a meditative way. The soft measure of his voice, with little pauses as if to mark the cadence, exercised a sort of spell upon the girl, who with passion in all her veins, and a suffocating sense of growing rage, which made her almost powerless, and took away words in the very heat of her need for them—moved on too against her will, feeling that she could express herself only by tones of fury if she attempted to express herself at all.
"Money does it all," said Edward, in the same meditative way. "I am supposed to have as much as he has, but I am tied to an old woman's apron, and would lose everything were I to venture like he. Why should he be free and I a slave? I know no reason. Caprice—chance, made it so. He might have been taken in at the Grange, and I at the White House. Then I should have been the man, and he been nowhere. It is just so in life. Nothing but money can set it right. Money does. You can believe in Providence when you have money. I shall get it some day; but so far as this goes, I shall be too late. For you, there are compensations," he said, giving a little glance at her. "You will find him very manageable—more manageable than many who would have suited you better—than myself for instance. I should not have been docile at all—even to you—but he will be. You can do what you please with him; there is compensation in all——"
"Cousin Edward," said Hester, suddenly finding her voice, "you told me just now that I disliked to walk alone, that I was poor and had no body-guard. I said, who would harm me? but you have proved that it was true, and I a fool. I did want a body-guard, some one to see that I was not insulted, to protect me, on a quiet country road, from—from—"
"Yes? from—whom? an unsuccessful suitor: a man that always has a right to be insulting," cried Edward with a sort of laugh, "to relieve his mind. True! to be sure all these things are true. It is quite right that a girl needs protection. Men are stronger than she is, and they will insult her if it is in their power, if not in one way then in another. The weak will always go to the wall. If there is nobody to take care of you, and nobody to punish me for it, of course I shall treat you badly. If I am not any worse than my neighbours I don't pretend to be any better. Do you think I should have waited for you to-night if I had not wanted to insult you? because you were alone and unprotected and unfriended," he said, with a sort of snarl at her, turning upon her with a fierce sneer on his face.
Hester was struck with a horror which stopped her indignation in full career. "Oh," she cried, "how can you make yourself out to be so ignoble, so ungenerous! even when you say it I cannot believe it; to insult me cannot be what you mean."
"Why not?" he said, looking at her, "you can't do anything to me. For your own sake you will tell nobody that Edward Vernon met you and—said anything that he ought not to have said. Besides, if you wished to ruin me with her," he waved his hand towards the Grange as he spoke, "in the first place she would not believe you, in the second place if it came to that I should not much mind. It would be emancipation anyhow; I should be no longer a slave bound to follow a woman, in chains. If I lost in one way, I should gain in another. But I am safe with you," he said with another laugh; "I am free to irritate you, to outrage you as much as I please; you will not complain: and in that case why should not I take it out of you?" he cried, turning fiercely upon her.
Hester was too much startled to retain the violent indignation and offence of her first impulse. She was overwhelmed with pity and horror.
"Cousin Edward," she said, "you do not mean all that. You did not come here to insult me. You must have had some other thought. You must be very unhappy somehow, and troubled, and distressed to speak as you are doing now. It comes out of yourself, it is not anything about me."