‘Wait one minute. I have a word to say to you.’
Owen sat down again.
‘You know, without my saying it, that I love Cytherea as dearly as ever.... I think she loves me too,—does she really?’
There was in Owen enough of that worldly policy on the subject of matchmaking which naturally resides in the breasts of parents and guardians, to give him a certain caution in replying, and, younger as he was by five years than Edward, it had an odd effect.
‘Well, she may possibly love you still,’ he said, as if rather in doubt as to the truth of his words.
Springrove’s countenance instantly saddened; he had expected a simple ‘Yes,’ at the very least. He continued in a tone of greater depression—
‘Supposing she does love me, would it be fair to you and to her if I made her an offer of marriage, with these dreary conditions attached—that we lived for a few years on the narrowest system, till a great debt, which all honour and duty require me to pay off, shall be paid? My father, by reason of the misfortune that befell him, is under a great obligation to Miss Aldclyffe. He is getting old, and losing his energies. I am attempting to work free of the burden. This makes my prospects gloomy enough at present.
‘But consider again,’ he went on. ‘Cytherea has been left in a nameless and unsatisfactory, though innocent state, by this unfortunate, and now void, marriage with Manston. A marriage with me, though under the—materially—untoward conditions I have mentioned, would make us happy; it would give her a locus standi. If she wished to be out of the sound of her misfortunes we would go to another part of England—emigrate—do anything.’
‘I’ll call Cytherea,’ said Owen. ‘It is a matter which she alone can settle.’ He did not speak warmly. His pride could not endure the pity which Edward’s visit and errand tacitly implied. Yet, in the other affair, his heart went with Edward; he was on the same beat for paying off old debts himself.
‘Cythie, Mr. Springrove is here,’ he said, at the foot of the staircase.