“Indeed, indeed, sir,” I cried, rising from the couch and falling on my knees before him, “I am trying to mould my mind to your will, believe me. Only remember how your goodness has always indulged your girl in the past, and you’ll perceive how difficult she finds it to accommodate her behaviour to your present awful severity. Pray, sir, don’t think I regard it as ill deserved—I believe I know my faults—but bear with me for to-day, I beg of you.”
“You’re a strange unaccountable hussy,” says my papa, but not so harshly. “What do you want, miss, I should like to know? Well, cry your eyes out to-day, if you will have it so, but mind, no sulking to-morrow, on pain of my gravest displeasure.”
I heard him sigh impatiently as he went away, and (undutiful wretch! you’ll say) the sound rejoiced me, for I knew that whatever my stepmother’s arts had been, they had not availed to estrange my papa’s heart from his girl. My next visitor was Mrs Freyne herself, who came creeping in, with her finger to her lip, after my papa was gone back to his dufter-conna.
“So you’re to marry the Captain, miss?” she said in a half-whisper; “I hope you’re pleased with the prospect?”
I could not think of any answer to make, and she went on, “Now, miss, I know you’ve often taken it vastly unkind in me that I’ve chanced to disoblige you now and then, but I’ll assure you I en’t really ill-natured. I won’t see you drove into a distasteful marriage without offering you a hope of escape. What do you say to marrying a rich and handsome young gentleman that’s dying for you, instead of your solemn-faced, miserly old Scotchman?”
“Who’s the gentleman, if you please, madam?”
“As though you needed to ask! ’Tis Menotti, of course, with the most elegant residence and keeping the best company in Calcutta. Come, miss, a chitt from me will bring him here in ten minutes, and Padra Mapletoft with him, and you shall be married quietly in your chamber, with no fuss or confusion. Then you can go home with him at once if you please, or if you choose still to play the prude and torment the poor man, he’ll be content not to claim you until you’re reconciled to the notion. Here’s pen and ink, I see—shall I write?”
Now it may appear strange to my Amelia, but this proposition of Mrs Freyne’s went far to reconcile me to quite another notion than hers. ’Twas possible, then, to meet a worse fate than to be compelled to marry an excellent good man that one did not love—even to lay oneself under an eternal obligation of the same nature to a wicked person that one hated.
“I thank you, madam,” I said, “but if I must marry one or other of the gentlemen, I’ll choose the Captain.”
“Then you’re a fool,” says she, “to choose a poor beggarly captain of Company’s troops, with whom you may be grateful if you get a silk gown once in ten years, in preference to one that will load you with the finest jewels and richest stuffs that can be had. I wonder, miss, where the obliging disposition is, with which the gentlemen all credit you, when you can doom to despair an adorer that has worshipped you so long with the utmost devotion, and for no reason at all?”