The Claverings | Page 3

we were living here together, am I fit, after what I have done and seen during the last two years? Do you think it would really do any good to any one if I were to jilt, as you call it, Lord Ongar, and tell them all--your cousin, Sir Hugh, and my sister, and your father--that I was going to keep myself up, and marry you when you were ready for me?"
"You mean to say that the evil is done."
"No, indeed. At the present moment I owe six hundred pounds, and I don't know where to turn for it, so that my husband may not be dunned for my debts as soon as he has married me. What a wife I should have been for you--should I not?"
"I could pay the six hundred pounds for you with money that I have earned myself--though you do call me an usher--and perhaps would ask fewer questions about it than Lord Ongar will do with all his thousands."
"Dear Harry, I beg your pardon about the usher. Of course, I know that you are a fellow of your college, and that St. Cuthbert's, where you teach the boys, is one of the grandest schools in England; and I hope you'll be a bishop; nay--I think you will, if you make up your mind to try for it."
"I have given up all idea of going into the church."
"Then you'll be a judge. I know you'll be great and distinguished, and that you'll do it all yourself. You are distinguished already. If you could only know how infinitely I should prefer your lot to mine! Oh, Harry, I envy you! I do envy you! You have got the ball at your feet, and the world before you, and can win everything for yourself."
"But nothing is anything without your love."
"Pshaw! Love, indeed. What could it do for you but ruin you? You know it as well as I do; but you are selfish enough to wish to continue a romance which would be absolutely destructive to me, though for a while it might afford a pleasant relaxation to your graver studies. Harry, you can choose in the world. You have divinity, and law, and literature, and art. And if debarred from love now by the exigencies of labor, you will be as fit for love in ten years' time as you are at present."
"But I do love now."
"Be a man, then, and keep it to yourself. Love is not to be our master. You can choose, as I say; but I have had no choice--no choice but to be married well, or to go out like a snuff of a candle. I don't like the snuff of a candle, and, therefore, I am going to be married well."
"And that suffices?"
"It must suffice. And why should it not suffice? You are very uncivil, cousin, and very unlike the rest of the world. Everybody compliments me on my marriage. Lord Ongar is not only rich, but he is a man of fashion, and a man of talent."
"Are you fond of race-horses yourself?"
"Very fond of them."
"And of that kind of life?"
"Very fond of it. I mean to be fond of everything that Lord Ongar likes. I know that I can't change him, and, therefore, I shall not try."
"You are right there, Miss Brabazon."
"You mean to be impertinent, sir; but I will not take it so. This is to be our last meeting in private, and I won't acknowledge that I am insulted. But it must be over now, Harry; and here I have been pacing round and round the garden with you, in spite of my refusal just now. It must not be repeated, or things will be said which I do not mean to have ever said of me. Good-by, Harry."
"Good-by, Julia."
"Well, for that once let it pass. And remember this: I have told you all my hopes, and my one trouble. I have been thus open with you because I thought it might serve to make you look at things in a right light. I trust to your honor as a gentleman to repeat nothing that I have said to you."
I am not given to repeat such things as those."
"I'm sure you are not. And I hope you will not misunderstand the spirit in which they have been spoken. I shall never regret what I have told you now, if it tends to make you perceive that we must both regard our past acquaintance as a romance, which must, from the stern necessity of things, be treated as a dream which we have dreamt, or a poem which we have read."
"You can treat it as you please."
"God bless you, Harry; and I will always hope for your welfare, and hear of your success with joy. Will you come