"I did not mean to be disrespectful," I murmured at last. "I am willing to do all that you desire."
"You have said that you do not love this man, Virginia."
"I love him as much as I shall ever love any one else," I answered.
"I accept your sacrifice, my child. Some day you will thank me. But write to-night. I shall sleep better if I feel that it is done. Promise me," he added, looking at me with a strange eagerness that was pathetic, and made the tears return to my eyes, but this time out of tenderness,—"promise me that whatever happens, you will accept the trust I am going to leave you."
I ran to his side, and kneeling, raised my eyes to his,—"Forgive me, father! I promise faithfully."
Only a few words more need to be said concerning this phase of my life. That night I wrote to Mr. Spence. Gratitude and friendship will not make up for the absence of love, but whatever there can be of consolation in these substitutes I sent to him. Why was it that as I penned the lines which were to disappoint his hopes, I was vaguely conscious that my interest in his theories was already less? So difficult is it in life to determine precisely how far our beliefs are decided by our associations! But it is not to be supposed that because I admit this after the lapse of years, the consciousness of which I speak was at that time more than a secret one, which I shrank from confessing even to myself. Genuine were the tears I shed in private for many days. My life seemed to me a blank, and I had lost the motive of action. For allowing my father to be right, and the principles advocated by Mr. Spence to be monstrous and absurd, I had been too intimately connected with the system not to feel a great void in my existence at severing my relations with it. What was to take its place?
I had to undergo, moreover, one or two disagreeable interviews with my Aunt Agnes before the matter was finally settled. In the intensity of his disappointment, Mr. Spence applied to her and asked her to endeavor to alter my resolution. She sent for me, and though she did not disguise her surprise that her favorite should wish to marry at all, she was unequivocal in the expression of her opinion that I should never get such another chance. As I remained obdurate, she accused me of a deliberate attempt to trifle with his affections. I had already ruined the life of one man of genius, she said, who though a wanderer from the right path might reasonably have become a noble worker but for my influence; and now I was about to blight the happiness of one whose equal was to be found only a few times in a century. She even went to my father, and represented to him the folly I would commit in refusing such an offer. I was not present at the interview; but Aunt Agnes, as she came out of the library into the room where I was sitting, looked angry and severe.
"Money, money, money! That is all your father thinks of from morning until night. It is wearing on him too. It is killing him by inches."
"You are right, Aunt Agnes; he needs rest; he looks tired out," I said, ignoring the first part of her speech.
"It is his own fault. And now he wants to educate you in the same school. Lucretia Kingsley is correct,—oil and water are more fit to be mated than you and Mr. Spence. You have broken her heart, too, by your wanton conduct, Virginia. Her sympathy for Mr. Spence is very affecting."