I really believe that she worshipped me as a superior being. There had been few or no men in the out-of-the-way places where they had lived. There never are. They are all draughted off to business and employments of various kinds. So I not only had no equal in her estimation, but could not, by any possibility, have had one. She thought me the handsomest man in the world. She used to praise my talents and accomplishments to my face. Indeed, by the side of old Captain Lumley, who, prosy by nature, had long ago exhausted all his topics, I might have appeared a Crichton. Every now and then, however, when Caroline had called me clever, there used to come over me a shudder. Could she be ever brought to think of me as Emily Jobson probably did? The idea was positively maddening. Many a night did I lie awake, speculating whether, after all, it might not be better to secure myself against another such cross of destiny by freely revealing to her my great secret.
At last, reflection, building on the reminiscences of an old Cambridge tradition, suggested to me a plan which I lost no time in executing.
"My love," said I to Caroline one morning, "did you ever hear of Cambridge?"
"Oh yes!" she replied, apparently quoting from Pinnock; "it's the capital of Cambridgeshire."
"Did you never hear any thing else about it?" rejoined I.
"It's famous for its university, isn't it?" said she, seemingly from the same source.
"On this hint I spake," and told her how that I had been educated at Cambridge, and how that, after three years of intense study, I had received the greatest honour the university had to bestow—a plucking.
"Yes," said I, my face radiant with a triumphant expression—"I was actually plucked."
"I am sure you were, you dear, clever thing!" cried she, throwing her arms round my neck.
We were married at Monmouth, and I took my bride straight to London. I own I was a little desirous of showing Emily Jobson, or rather Emily Swetter, that there was a young lady in the world quite as pretty as herself, and with better taste. Swetter and his wife called on us as soon as he heard we were in town; and shortly afterwards we dined with them at their new house in Torrington Square. Among the guests was Grindham—my Grindham, but how changed! He had become tutor of his college, and had expanded into the most perfect specimen of the university don I ever beheld. He was positively swelling with importance. So inordinately conspicuous, indeed, was his air of self-appreciation, that even my little Caroline noticed it; and I heard her ask Mrs Swetter who and what he was.