“Dismiss him: do! Pay him his wages, and let him go,—he will be glad enough!” cries Maria.
“I keep him to marry one of my sisters, in case he is wanted,” says Castlewood, glaring at her.
“What can the women be in a family where there are such men?” says the lady.
“Effectivement!” says my lord, with a shrug of his shoulder.
“What can we be, when our fathers and brothers are what they are? We are bad enough, but what are you? I say, you neither have courage—no, nor honour, nor common feeling. As your equals won't play with you, my Lord Castlewood, you must take this poor lad out of Virginia, your own kinsman, and pigeon him! Oh, it's a shame—a shame!”
“We are all playing our own game, I suppose. Haven't you played and won one, Maria? Is it you that are squeamish of a sudden about the poor lad from Virginia? Has Mr. Harry cried off, or has your ladyship got a better offer?” cried my Lord. “If you won't have him, one of the Warrington girls will, I promise you; and the old Methodist woman in Hill Street will give him the choice of either. Are you a fool, Maria Esmond? A greater fool, I mean, than in common?”
“I should be a fool if I thought that either of my brothers could act like an honest man, Eugene!” said Maria. “I am a fool to expect that you will be other than you are; that if you find any relative in distress you will help him; that if you can meet with a victim you won't fleece him.”
“Fleece him! Psha! What folly are you talking! Have you not seen, from the course which the lad has been running for months past, how he would end? If I had not won his money, some other would? I never grudged thee thy little plans regarding him. Why shouldst thou fly in a passion, because I have just put out my hand to take what he was offering to all the world? I reason with you, I don't know why, Maria. You should be old enough to understand reason, at any rate. You think this money belonged of right to Lady Maria Warrington and her children? I tell you that in three months more every shilling would have found its way to White's macco-table, and that it is much better spent in paying my debts. So much for your ladyship's anger, and tears, and menaces, and naughty language. See! I am a good brother, and repay them with reason and kind words.”
“My good brother might have given a little more than kind words to the lad from whom he has just taken hundreds,” interposed the sister of this affectionate brother.
“Great heavens, Maria! Don't you see that even out of this affair, unpleasant as it seems, a clever woman may make her advantage,” cries my lord. Maria said she failed to comprehend.