“You, courage and heart!” she said, “of course you will have both, Lewis. You are not the kind of man that fails. I never for a moment expected anything else. It is not always, to be sure, that men get what they deserve; but you—you are not of the mettle which fails.”
“But supposing that, and that I succeed, what is it to lead to, Lady Curtis?” he asked, half-mournfully; for it was evident to him that, as yet, she had not even the least glimmer of imagination as to what he was going to ask.
“Lead to?” she said; “the Bench of course, and perhaps the woolsack; you speak so little of yourself that I scarcely know which way your ambitions lie, Lewis, whether you care for politics at all; of course that is the finer career of the two—if you take to it.”
“That is all you give me then,” he said, “my choice of two dignities? I do not say they are not both great objects of ambition; but is there nothing sweeter, nothing dearer to come, my lady? You are very kind to me—kinder than I had any right to expect; but have you nothing more to wish me in your kind heart than the woolsack and the Bench?”
She looked at him, faltering a little. She began now to see what he meant.
“What can I say more?” she said, “yes, everything, Lewis. I wish you all—you can desire.”
“The desire of my heart,” he said, getting up from his seat in his agitation; “that is the wish in the Psalms, and there is none that goes so far, or is so sweet. My lady, you have known me almost ever since I was fit to form a wish. Don’t you know what it is—the desire of my heart?”
“Lewis—Lewis!” she cried, hastily; then stopped. Had she been about to warn him to say no more, to stop him in the revelation of his wishes? but if so she changed her mind, and looked at him eagerly, alarmed, and wringing her hands.
“You know what it is,” he said, with a smile, turning to her. “I don’t need to say it, do I? If I cannot have Lucy, what is everything else worth to me? I know I am not her equal in birth, if you still think that matters, beyond everything else. But does it, does it? No one else can have thought of her so long and constantly as I have done. I know all her tastes, her ways. What she likes I like—and her brother, you know, Lady Curtis—has been all I have known for a brother.”
“I know, I know,” she said, and the tears in her eyes were not now tears of pleasure. She shook her head while she looked at him with motherly tenderness, through her wet eyelashes. “And you have been the best brother to him, the kindest!” she cried. “Alas!” but with all she shook her head.