'But not now; you said yourself, Aunt Milly, how nobly she behaved in that last affair.'
'True,' continued Mildred in a sorrowful tone; 'all the more that she was inclined to succumb to a momentary fascination; but I am certain that with all his intellect Mr. Cathcart would have been a most undesirable husband for her; Sir Robert Ferrers is far preferable.'
'Aunt Milly!'
'Yes, Richard, and I told her so; but her only answer was that she would not marry where she could not love. I am afraid this will widen the breach between her and her father; her last letter was very sad.'
'It is tyranny, downright persecution; how dares he. Oh, Aunt Milly!' in a tone of deep despondency, 'if I were only ten years older.'
'I am afraid you are very young, Cardie. I wish you had not set your heart on this.'
'Yes, we are too much of an age; but she need not fear, I am older in everything than she; there is nothing boyish about me, is there, Aunt Milly?'
'Not in your love for Ethel, I am afraid; but, Cardie, what would her father say if he knew it?'
'He will know it some day. Look here, Aunt Milly, I am one-and-twenty now, and I have loved Ethel, Miss Trelawny I mean, since I was a boy of twelve; people may laugh, but I felt for my old playmate something of what I feel now. She was always different from any one else in my eyes. I remember telling my mother when I was only ten that Ethel should be my wife.'
'But, Richard——'