"Long engagements are most unsatisfactory, silly, not to say dangerous things. They never end well. No man ought to wish so to bind a young girl, unless he has a reasonable chance of soon being in a position to marry her. Now I ask you, have you such a chance? If you go to Canada, it may be years before you return. Just look at the thing in a common-sense light, and tell me, can you expect my daughter to wait an indefinite time, while you go to seek and make your fortune?"
She looked at him with an air of bland candor, while thus appealing to his "common sense." Everett's aspect remained unchanged, however, in its calm steadfastness.
"I would not bind her," he said, "unless she herself felt it would be a comfort and a help, in some sort, during the weary years of separation, so to be bound. And that she does feel it, you know, Lady Beauchamp."
"My dear Sir, you are not talking reasonably," she rejoined, impatiently. "A young girl like Rosa, in love for the first time, of course wishes to be bound, as you say, to the object of her first love. But it would be doing her a cruel injustice to take her at her word. Surely you feel that? It is very true, she might not forget you for six months, or more, perhaps. But, in the course of time, as she enters on life and sees more of the world and of people, it is simply impossible that she should remain constant to a dreamy attachment to some one thousands of miles away. She would inevitably wish to form other ties; and then the engagement that she desires to-day would be the blight and burden of her life. No. I say it is a cruel injustice to let young people decide for themselves on such a point. Half the misery in the world springs from these mistakes. Think over the matter coolly, and you will see it as I do."
"It is you who do Rosa injustice," Everett answered, and paused. "Were it to be as you wish," he added, "and we to separate utterly, with no outwardly acknowledged tie to link us, no letters to pass between us, no word or sign from one to the other during all the coming years,—suppose it so,—you would shadow our lives with much unnecessary misery; but you are mistaken, if you think you would really part us. You do not understand."
"Nonsense! You talk like a young man in love. You must be reasonable."
Lady Beauchamp, by this time, had worked herself into the usual warmth with which she argued all questions, great and small, and forgot that her original intention in speaking to Everett had only been to set before him the disadvantages of his plans, in order that her own might come to the rescue with still greater brilliancy and effect.
"You must be reasonable," she repeated. "You don't suppose I have not my child's happiness at heart in all I plan and purpose? Trust me, I have had more experience of life than either of you, and it is for me to interpose between you and the dangers you would blindly rush upon. Some day you will both thank me for having done so, hard and cruel as you may think me now."
"No, I do not think you either hard or cruel. You are mistaken, simply. I believe you desire our happiness. I do not reproach or blame you, Lady Beauchamp," Everett said, sadly.
"Come, come," she cried, touched by his look and manner to an immediate unfolding of her scheme, "let us look at things again. Perhaps we shall not find them so hopeless as they look. If I am prudent, Everett, I am not mercenary. I only want to see Rosa happy. I don't care whether it is on hundreds a year, or thousands. And the fact is, I have not condemned your plans without having a more satisfactory one to offer to your choice. Listen to me."