And this, too, was part of her education.
CHAPTER XXXV.
"Love in her eyes lay hiding,
His time in patience biding."
"Square it with Colquhoun before you go any farther," said Ladds.
Square it with the guardian—speak to the young lady's father—make it all right with the authorities; what excellent advice to give, and how easy to follow it up! Who does not look forward with pleasure, or backward as to an agreeable reminiscence, to that half hour spent in a confidential talk with dear papa? How calmly critical, how severely judicial, was his summing up! With what a determined air did he follow up the trail, elicited in cross-examination, of former sins! With how keen a scent did he disinter forgotten follies, call attention to bygone extravagances, or place the finger of censure upon debts which never ought to have been incurred, and economies which ought to have been made!
Remember his "finally"—a word which from childhood has been associated with sweet memories, because it brings the sermon to an end, but which henceforth will awake in your brain the ghost of that mauvais quart d'heure. In that brief peroration he tore the veil from the last cherished morsel of self-illusion; he showed you that the furnishing of a house was a costly business, that he was not going to do it for you, that servants require an annual income of considerable extent, that his daughter had been brought up a lady, that lady's dress is a serious affair, that wedlock in due season brings babies, and that he was not so rich as he seemed.
Well, perhaps he said "Yes" reluctantly, in spite of drawbacks. Then you felt that you were regarded by the rest of the family as the means of preventing dear Annabella from making a brilliant match. That humbled you for life. Or perhaps he said "No." In that case you went away sadly and meditated suicide. And whether you got over the fit, or whether you didn't—though of course you did—the chances were that Annabella never married at all, and you are still regarded by the family as the cause of that sweet creature not making the exceptionally splendid alliance which, but for you, the disturbing influence, would have been her lot.
However, the thing is necessary, unless people run away, a good old fashion by which such interviews, together with wedding-breakfasts, wedding-garments, and wedding-presents were avoided.
Running away is out of fashion. It would have been the worst form possible in Jack Dunquerque even to propose such a thing to Phillis, and I am not at all certain that he would ever have made her understand either the necessity or the romance of the thing. And I am quite sure that she would never understand that Jack Dunquerque was asking her to do a wrong thing.