'I know what you are going to say—that it is all hopeless moonshine, that a curate with four or five hundred a year has no right to presume to Mr. Trelawny's heiress; that is what he and the world will tell me; but how am I to help loving her?'
'What am I to say to you, Cardie? Long before you are your father's curate Ethel may have met the man she can love.'
'Then I shall bear my trouble, I hope, manfully. Don't you think this is my one dread, that and being so young in her eyes? How little she knew how she tempted me when she told me I ought to distinguish myself at the Bar; I felt as though it were giving her up when I decided on taking orders.'
'She would call you a veritable Cœur-de-Lion if she knew. Oh! my poor boy, how hardly this has gone with you,' as Richard's face whitened again with emotion.
'It has been terribly hard,' he returned, almost inaudibly; 'it was not so much at last reluctance and fear of the work as the horrible dread of losing her by my own act. I thought—it was foolish and young of me, I daresay—but I thought that as people spoke of my capabilities I might in time win a position that should be worthy even of her. Oh, Aunt Milly! what a fool you must think me.'
Richard's clear glance was overcast with pain as he spoke, but Mildred's affectionate smile spoke volumes.
'I think I never loved you so well, Cardie, now I know how nobly you have acted. Have you told your father of this?'
'No, but I am sure he knows; you have no idea how much he notices; he said something to me once that showed me he was aware of my feelings; we have no secrets now; that is your doing, Aunt Milly.'
Mildred shook her head.
'Ah, but it was; you were the first to break down my reserve; what a churl I must have been in those days. You all think too well of me as it is. Livy especially puts me in a bad humour with myself.'