‘And when do you see her?’
‘I am to see her ladyship this very morning.’
‘To inform her of your acquiescence. Yes; it is the usual form. The time is very short.’
‘My acquiescence?’ asked the Earl. ‘We shall see about that presently.’
‘Patience, my lord!’ The Professor was thinking what to advise for the best. ‘Patience! Let us have no sudden and violent resolves. We may get time. Ay—time will be our best friend. Remember that the Chancellor must be obeyed. She may, for the sake of courtesy, go through the form of proposing a suitable alliance for your consideration, but her proposition is her order, which you must obey. Otherwise it is contempt of court, and the penalty——’
‘I know it,’ said the Earl, ‘already. It is imprisonment.’
‘Such contempt would be punished by imprisonment for life. Imprisonment, hopeless.’
‘Nay,’ he replied. ‘Not hopeless, because one could always hope in the power of friends. Have I not Constance? And then, you see, Professor, I am two-and-twenty, while the Chancellor and the Duchess are both sixty-five. Perhaps they may join the majority.’
The Professor shook her head. Even to speak of the age of so great a lady, even to hint at her death as an event likely to happen soon, was an outrage against propriety—which is religion.
‘My determination is this,’ he went on, ‘whatever the consequence, I will never marry the Duchess. Law or no law, I will never marry a woman unless I love her.’ His eye rested for a moment on his cousin, and he reddened. ‘I may be imprisoned, but I shall carry with me the sympathy of every woman—that is, of every young woman—in the country.’