“Well, well, don’t let us quarrel about the words—now that Sir Alexis is about to be made happy with the hand, &c. By Jove, you may say what you like, Nelly, but it is the cleverest coup I have heard of for a very long time. Altogether the family is in luck; and if you play your cards well, and we can get hold of your mother when she is in a good humour——”
Poor Nelly’s endurance had been greatly tried. Her troubles which she dared not confide to her lover—the sense that he could not be trusted to enter into the closer circle of her family anxieties, and consequently that his sympathy with herself could never be complete—had long been gnawing at her heart and embittering all his careless words and irreverent thoughts. She turned red and then pale, tremulous and then rigid, in the passionate tumult of feeling which took possession of her; but she kept herself calm with all her might, and answered him with an artificial coldness which filled Molyneux half with ridicule, half with dismay.
“How am I to play my cards?” she said, “and what is it that you mean to ask from my mother when she is in a good humour?”
“Nelly!” he said, half laughing, half angry, “what does this tragedy-queen air portend? surely it is a little late to get on stilts with me. Of course you know as well as I do what I have to propose to your mother. We can’t marry without her help; the responsibility lies upon her of keeping you from being settled and done for—I and my people are ready enough. When I talk of playing your cards, I take it for granted you want our business to be decided as much as I do,—and the very first step for us is to know how much she means to do.”
“I look at it in a different way,” said Nelly, plunging desperately into the centre of the question which she had so long avoided. “Ernest, now we must understand each other at last; I will not have any such proposal made to mamma. I will not!—it does not matter what you say. If we cannot do with what we have and your profession, it is better to put an end to it altogether. I have not wished for anything, nor thought of any thing beyond what we could afford,” cried Nelly suddenly, the tears coming in spite of her,—“but I will not take our living from mamma!”
Molyneux was thunderstruck. “Why, Nelly!” he said, in the half-derisive, half-affectionate tone which had so often disarmed her, “you innocent little goose!” and he drew her within his arm. But Nelly was wrought to a point which did not admit of this treatment. She withdrew from his clasp, and stood fronting him, tears in her eyes, but resolution in her face.
“We must understand each other,” she cried. “I have long tried to say it. Now I have had courage to speak, and I cannot go back. I will live as poorly as you like—if you like; but I will not fight with my own mother for money; I will not take our living from hers; I am determined. But I must not bind you,” she added, faltering slightly, “if you think otherwise. If you think otherwise—if there is no other alternative—Ernest, I must set you free——”
“To speak to your mother?” he said, with a laugh in which there was some relief. “I should have done it without all this declamation, Nelly.”
“No,—but to be free from me,” said Nelly, folding closely together the hands which he tried to take.