“She is reserved—shy, as I told you—and confoundedly proud. She owned to me just now, that the idea of her becoming your wife in order to carry out her uncle’s and my wishes was abhorrent to her. ‘If I am to be loved, papa,’ she said, ‘I must be loved without regard to the wishes or objections of outsiders.’”
“My views exactly,” I exclaimed, “I never came here with the intention of making love to her. I wanted to know her and enjoy your hospitality and society, and uncle Tom could have no right to expect more from me. I always was and always shall be opposed to marriages ‘of convenience,’” I continued warmly. “A man and a woman are brought together without love, without sympathy, without probably one interest in common, save that of mutual disgust. How can they be happy? You may tell them that their marriage will fill their pockets with money; but how many pounds sterling does an ounce of pure love cost? Where are they to go to market for their everyday moral wants? I am too poor, and I hope too wise to sneer at money; but in my humble opinion the man who should set to work to make a map of human life, would not blunder in putting all the best things outside the money line.”
CHAPTER VII.
“A ship and a woman are ever repairing.”
Jacula Prudentum.
My conversation did not terminate with that very fine philosophical stroke you have just read; but it is not worth while recording what followed, as it consisted entirely of apologies and excuses on my uncle’s side, and polite protests and entreaties on mine.
Indeed, now that the trick was exposed and Theresa repentant, I was inclined to witness something exceedingly diverting in the whole performance, and to think my cousin no ordinary genius for so cleverly planning and so bravely executing a very repulsive part. I could not quite believe that she was so repentant as her papa represented her. Somewhat ashamed of herself she might indeed be, not so much on account of her vagaries, as because she had so instantly dropped her mask on hearing I was in love with Conny. There was a confession of weakness in this she would not like to remember.
Meanwhile my uncle was extraordinarily polite. The kind-hearted old man was obviously anxious to make me all the amends in his power. He planned a fishing excursion, a riding party, a drive to some famous ruins; he begged me to suggest my own amusements. He had an engagement at half-past eleven to meet some man on business at the village, whither he asked me to accompany him. I told him I should prefer rambling amongst the trees in the grounds, the truth being, I wanted to see Theresa and become friends with her.
“Very well,” said he; “do whatever you please. I shall be back by lunch-time, and then we’ll think over some way of getting rid of the afternoon.”