“You are a cool loon,” said Rowland, half offended. “Perhaps you do not wish she should.”
“Well, she wouldn’t like it,” said Eddy. “I can’t help thinking of her as well as of myself. She’d take the young Duke, if he turned up, in any case. There isn’t an eligible young Duke, I believe, now,” he said thoughtfully, “but the next best. And she wouldn’t wait three years for me, oh no, though she might like me well enough. The three years system would make an end of that. I am very much obliged to you for holding out the chance; and I’ll take your advice for myself, Mr. Rowland, and go—wherever you decide. But we’re bound to think what’s best for her first, don’t you see? And I couldn’t give my consent to asking her to wait for three years. Dear me, no! not for me, as if I were a great catch or good for anything. It would scarcely be worth her while to stoop and pick me up if I were lying in her road. Why should she wait three years for me?”
“Eddy, you are a very queer fellow,” said Rowland; “I don’t know what to make of you. Tell me, now, if you were left entirely to yourself, what would you like to do.”
“I!” he said. Eddy swung his foot more and more, and sat reflecting for a minute or two. Then he burst into a laugh. “I suppose she enjoys her life as much as we do,” he said, “poor old soul! I was going to say there’s an old aunt of the governor’s, that must die sometime. If she would be so obliging as to do it now, and leave me her money, as she says she means to!—Then the governor would hand me over Gilston, which he hates, and Marion and I—But it’s all absurdity and a dream. The old aunt won’t die, why should she? and we—why there’s no we, that’s the best of it! and we are discussing a thing that will never be.”
Rowland walked about the room from end to end, as he sometimes did when he was forming a resolution. “So you think there’s nothing but Gilston for you, Eddy?” he said.
“I should be out of harm’s way,” said the lad, “and a place to fill—it might answer, but again it might not. But why should my old aunt die to please me? or Marion give up her Duke—or you take all this trouble—I am not worth it,” Eddy said.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
“You put Mrs. Rowland on my traces,” said Eddy; “why did you do so, you little witch? Wait till I find out some bad trick I can play you.”
“It has all turned out very well,” said Marion sedately. “I am not at all sorry I did it. I knew that man was about something wrong. And you should not know such people, Mr. Saumarez. I was bound to tell them anything I knew.”
“Miss Rowland,” said Eddy, “your father is going to pay all my debts, and send me out to California, or somewhere, to a ranch, to expiate all my sins; and when I come back in three years or so, as a reward, if you are not the Duchess of So-and-so, we may, if we please, marry.”