“I have resigned myself to you, as I cannot help myself any more than the fish can that is pounced on by the sea-bird, or the fuel that is enveloped by the flame, or the ship that is boarded by the wrecker.”
She looked at him steadily; he was quivering with excitement, anger, and disappointment.
“It is quite right that you should know what to expect, and make no more demands on me that I am capable of answering. You cannot ask of me that I should become like you, and I do not entertain the foolish thought that you could be brought to be like me—to see through my eyes, feel with my heart. My dead father lies between us now, and he will ever be between us—he a man of pure life, noble aspirations, a man of books, of high principle, fearing God and loving men. What he was he tried to make me. Imperfectly, faultily, I follow him, but though unable to be like him, I strive after what he showed me should be my ideal.”
“You are a child. You will be a woman, and new thoughts will come to you.”
“Will they be good and honorable and contented thoughts? Shall I find those in your house?”
Coppinger did not reply, his brows were drawn together and his face became dark.
“Why, then, have you promised to come to me?”
“Because of Jamie.”
He uttered an oath, and with his hands clenched the upper stone of the tomb.
“I have promised my aunt that I will accept you, if you will suffer my poor brother to live where I live, and suffer me to be his protector. He is helpless and must have someone to think and watch for him. My aunt would have sent him to Mr. Obadiah Scantlebray’s asylum, and that would have been fatal to him. To save him from that I said that I would be yours, on the condition that my home should be his home. I have passed my word to my aunt, and I will not go from it, but that does not mean that I have changed my belief that we are unfitted for each other, because we belong to different orders of being.”