“Her consent?” said Lucy, with momentary surprise. Then she made her first rebellion against all she had hitherto considered most sacred. “I think we might do without it,” she said.
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE END.
There was one thing which Sir Thomas got out of his matrimonial arrangements which was more than he expected, and that was a great deal of fun. After he had received, in the way above described, the angry submission of the two whom he chiefly feared, he had entered into the spirit of the thing, and determined that he would faithfully obey the will, and obtain the assent of all that marriage committee, who expected to make Lucy’s marrying so difficult a matter. He was even visited by some humorous compunctions as he went on. The entire failure of poor old Trevor’s precautions on this point awakened a kind of sympathetic regret in his mature mind. “Poor old fellow!” he said; “probably I was the last person he would have given his heiress to: most likely all these fences were made to keep me out,” he laughed; yet he felt a kind of sympathy for the old man, who, indeed, however, would have had no such objection to Sir Thomas as Sir Thomas thought. Next morning Lucy’s suitor went to the rector, who, to be sure, had it in his power to stop the whole proceedings, advanced as they were. But the rector had heard, by some of the subtle secret modes of communication which convey secrets, of something going on, and patted Sir Thomas on the shoulder.
“My dear Sir Tom,” he said, “I never for a moment attached any importance to the vote given to me. Why should I interfere with Miss Trevor’s marriage? Your father-in-law that is to be (if one can speak in the future tense of a person who is in the past) entertained some odd ideas. He was an excellent man, I have not a doubt on that point, but— Now what could I know about it, for instance? I know Lucy—she’s a very nice girl, my girls like what they have seen of her immensely; but I know nothing about her surroundings. I am inclined to think she is very lucky to have fallen into no worse hands than yours.”
“The compliment is dubious,” said Sir Tom, “but I accept it; and I may take it for granted that I have your consent?”
“Certainly, certainly, you have my consent. I never thought of it but as a joke. That old man— I beg your pardon—your father-in-law must have had queer ideas about many things. I hear he left his heiress great latitude about spending—allowed her, in short, to give away her money.”
“I wonder how you heard that?”
“Ah! upon my word I can scarcely tell you. Common talk. They say, by the way, she is going to give a fortune to Katie Russell on her marriage with young Rainy, the school-master; compensation, that! Rainy (who is a young prig, full of dissenting blood, though it suits him to be a churchman) no doubt thought he had a good chance for the heiress herself.”
“Don’t speak any worse than you can help of my future relations,” said Sir Tom, with a laugh: “it might make things awkward afterward;” upon which the rector perceived that he had gone half a step too far.
“Rainy is a very respectable fellow; there is not a word to be said against him. I wish I could say as much for all my own relations,” he said; “but, Randolph, as I am a kind of a guardian, you know, take my advice in one thing. It is all very fine to be liberal; but I would not let her throw her money away.”