“I did not mean to set up any claim on that score,” he said, quickly; “but because there has been this constant affection between us, and I have never thought of any other woman. All the rest of the world has been naught to me by the side of Lucy. I have thought of no one but her. And is this all nothing, my lady, worse than nothing, because my grandfather was a tradesman? It seems hard, don’t you think it is hard, difficult to bear?”
“Lewis, you know it is not so everywhere,” she cried. “There are gentlemen in England—the best in the land, who would give their daughter to you, Lewis Durant, good as you are known to be, the truest gentleman, and rejoice in her happiness!” She paused, and her voice fell, and once more she shook her head. “But Sir John—”
“If I have your help, my lady, I will not be afraid of Sir John,” he said, “he is not like you; but he is good to the bottom of his heart, good all through and through.”
“Lewis!” cried my lady, with sudden emotion, “do you want me to be in love with you as well as Lucy? So he is, my dear boy; so he is, my dear prejudiced narrow-minded old man! he does not understand always—but he is good, as you say, all good, and no guile in him. But what has that to do with it after all, my poor boy?” she added, dropping from her enthusiasm, and shaking her head once more. “He is fond of you too, and that does not matter either; you will never get him to see it, never! I know him better than you do.”
“If you will be on my side he will come to see it,” said Durant. She made him no direct reply, but hurried on.
“And all the more since we have had this disappointment with Arthur. If Arthur had married happily as we liked—as young Seymour has done—things might have been different. But now that Arthur has made such shipwreck, Lucy is all that is left to us. He will not let her speak to anyone whom he thinks inferior to her. He has almost shut the house even to his nephew Bertie; he would prefer even that she did not marry at all.”
“All this will not alarm me,” he said, keeping his eyes upon her, “if you are on my side.”
“Think!” she said, not paying any attention; “think how bad it is for us in the county. Arthur thrown away upon a—worse than nobody: a foolish girl who has not even the wit to hold by him and make him happy—our only son! and Lucy our only daughter, if she too were to—”
“Marry a nobody!” he said, with a smile, which he could not divest of some bitterness. “Ah, Lady Curtis! that was what I feared—you are not on my side.”
“Lewis, only think!” she said; “put yourself in my place! I have been so proud of my children; perhaps it was foolish, heaven knows one always suffers for it; but if neither of them—neither of them! is to—have any succès in marriage, make any brilliant connection. Yes, yes,” she said, “it is contemptible, I know it, you have a right to scorn me; but, Lewis, put yourself in my place.”