Looking at her lover coldly, she was the first to speak. "Mr. Ogden," she said, "I may sink a good deal in your esteem by what I am going to say to you, but my own future must be considered as well as yours. We should be sorry to sacrifice your prospects, but I am thinking of myself also. I do not think that I could live contentedly as a surgeon's wife at Shayton."
Young Jacob was astounded. This from Edith! The very last thing he had ever anticipated was an objection of the selfish kind from her. He had counted upon all obstacles but this; and all other obstacles were surmountable, but this was insurmountable. He saw at once that it would be madness to marry a young lady who despised his life, and the labors which he went through for her sake.
If he could only have known! She, poor thing, was new in this game of cruelty with a kind intention, and she played it with even more than necessary hardness. Perhaps she felt that without this overstrung hardness she could not deceive him at all; that the least approach to tenderness would be fatal to her purpose. She had imagination enough to conceive and act a part utterly foreign to her character, but not imagination enough to act a part only just sufficiently foreign to herself to serve her immediate end. So there was a harsh excess in what she did.
"Miss Stanburne," he said at last, "this gives me great pain."
The poor girl writhed inwardly, but she maintained a serene countenance, and, looking young Jacob full in the face, said, with a well-imitated sneer,—
"I may say with truth that it has latterly been agreeable to me to think that the daughter of Colonel Stanburne would one day live at Wenderholme.—But I confess I have not the sort of heroism which would consent to be a surgeon's wife in such a place as Shayton."
"If these are your reasons, Miss Stanburne, I have done. A man would be a fool to sacrifice his prospects, and slave at a profession all his life, for a woman who paid him with contempt. And I think I may say that you dismiss me with uncommon coolness. I've loved you these twelve years—I've loved you ever since I was a child. I never loved any other woman; and the reward of this devotion is, that I am sent away when my prospects are clouded, without a sign of emotion or a syllable to express regret. I think you might say you are sorry, at any rate."
"Very well, I will say that. I am sorry."
By a supreme effort of acting, Edith put an expression into her face which conveyed the idea that she considered emotion ridiculous, and young Jacob's own conduct as verging slightly upon the absurd. This stung him to the quick.