“I know all that is necessary.”
“You don’t know what I am going to tell you,” Colet persisted. “And I think that you should. I am going to marry the daughter of your uncle’s servant, Toft.”
“Good Lord!” cried Basset. This was a second and more serious blow. It brought him down from the clouds.
“That shocks you, Mr. Basset,” the curate continued with dignity, “that I should marry one in her position? Well, I am not called upon to justify it. Why I think her worthy, and more than worthy to share my life, is my business. I only trouble you with the matter because you have made me an offer which you might not have made had you known this.”
Basset did not deny the fact. He could not, indeed. His taste, his prejudice, his traditions all had received a blow, all were up in arms; and, for the moment, at any rate he repented of his visit. He felt that in stepping out of the normal round he had made a mistake. He should have foreseen, he should have known that he would meet with such shocks. “You have certainly astonished me,” he said after a pause of dismay. “I cannot think the match suitable, Mr. Colet. May I ask if my uncle knows of this?”
“Miss Audley knows of it.”
“But—you cannot yourself think it suitable!”
“I have,” Colet replied dryly, “or rather I had seventy pounds a year. What girl, born in comfort, gently bred, sheltered from childhood could I ask to share that? How could I, with so little in the present and no prospects, ask a gentlewoman to share my lot?”
Basset did not reply, but he was not convinced. A clergyman to marry a servant, good and refined as Etruria was! It seemed to him to be unseemly, to be altogether wrong.
Colet too was silent a moment. Then, “I am glad I have told you this,” he said. “I shall not now trespass on you. On the other hand, I hope that you may still do something—and with your name, you can do much—for the good cause. If rumor goes for anything, many will in the next few months examine the ground on which they stand. It will be much, if what I have said has weight with you.”