“Begad, yes, it is true, of course it’s true. Amory’s dead. I tell you he is dead. The first sign of life he shows, he is dead. He can’t appear. We have him at a deadlock, like the fellow in the play—the ‘Critic,’ hey?—dev’lish amusing play, that ‘Critic.’ Monstrous witty man, Sheridan; and so was his son. By Gad, sir, when I was at the Cape, I remember——”
The old gentleman’s garrulity, and wish to conduct Arthur to the Cape, perhaps arose from a desire to avoid the subject which was nearest his nephew’s heart; but Arthur broke out, interrupting him—“If you had told me this tale sooner, I believe you would have spared me and yourself a great deal of pain and disappointment; and I should not have found myself tied to an engagement from which I can’t, in honour, recede.”
“No, begad, we’ve fixed you—and a man who’s fixed to a seat in Parliament, and a pretty girl, with a couple of thousand a year, is fixed to no bad thing, let me tell you,” said the old man.
“Great Heavens, sir!” said Arthur, “are you blind? Can’t you see?”
“See what, young gentleman?” asked the other.
“See, that rather than trade upon this secret of Amory’s,” Arthur cried out, “I would go and join my father-in-law at the hulks! See, that rather than take a seat in Parliament as a bribe from Clavering for silence, I would take the spoons off the table! See, that you have given me a felon’s daughter for a wife; doomed me to poverty and shame; cursed my career when it might have been—when it might have been so different but for you! Don’t you see that we have been playing a guilty game, and have been overreached;—that in offering to marry this poor girl, for the sake of her money, and the advancement she would bring, I was degrading myself, and prostituting my honour?”
“What in Heaven’s name do you mean, sir?” cried the old man.
“I mean to say that there is a measure of baseness which I can’t pass,” Arthur said. “I have no other words for it, and am sorry if they hurt you. I have felt, for months past, that my conduct in this affair has been wicked, sordid, and worldly. I am rightly punished by the event, and having sold myself for money and a seat in Parliament, by losing both.”
“How do you mean that you lose either?” shrieked the old gentleman. “Who the devil’s to take your fortune or your seat away from you? By G—, Clavering shall give ’em to you. You shall have every shilling of eighty thousand pounds.”
“I’ll keep my promise to Miss Amory, sir,” said Arthur.