I do not wish to argue it, my dear, because there is no room for argument. The whole thing is preposterous. I cannot but think ill of him for having proposed it to you; for he must have known,--must have known, that a young man without an income cannot be accepted as a fitting suitor for a gentleman's daughter. As for yourself, I can only hope that you will get the little idea out of your head very quickly;--but mamma will speak to you about that. What I want you to understand from me is this,--that there must be an end to it."

Nora listened to this speech in perfect silence, standing before her father, and waiting patiently till the last word of it should be p.r.o.nounced. Even when he had finished she still paused before she answered him. "Papa," she said at last, and hesitated again before she went on.

"Well, my dear."

"I can not give it up."

"But you must give it up."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "But you must give it up," said Sir Marmaduke.]

"No, papa. I would do anything I could for you and mamma, but that is impossible."

"Why is it impossible?"

"Because I love him so dearly."

"That is nonsense. That is what all girls say when they choose to run against their parents. I tell you that it shall be given up. I will not have him here. I forbid you to see him. It is quite out of the question that you should marry such a man. I do hope, Nora, that you are not going to add to mamma's difficulties and mine by being obstinate and disobedient." He paused a moment, and then added, "I do not think that there is anything more to be said."

"Papa."

"My dear, I think you had better say nothing further about it. If you cannot bring yourself at the present moment to promise that there shall be an end of it, you had better hold your tongue. You have heard what I say, and you have heard what mamma says. I do not for a moment suppose that you dream of carrying on a communication with this gentleman in opposition to our wishes."

"But I do."

"Do what?"

"Papa, you had better listen to me." Sir Marmaduke, when he heard this, a.s.sumed an air of increased authority, in which he intended that paternal anger should be visible; but he seated himself, and prepared to receive, at any rate, some of the arguments with which Nora intended to bolster up her bad cause. "I have promised Mr.

Stanbury that I will be his wife."

"That is all nonsense."

"Do listen to me, papa. I have listened to you and you ought to listen to me. I have promised him, and I must keep my promise. I shall keep my promise if he wishes it. There is a time when a girl must be supposed to know what is best for herself,--just as there is for a man."

"I never heard such stuff in all my life. Do you mean that you'll go out and marry him like a beggar, with nothing but what you stand up in, with no friend to be with you, an outcast, thrown off by your mother,--with your father's--curse?"

"Oh, papa, do not say that. You would not curse me. You could not."

"If you do it at all, that will be the way."

"That will not be the way, papa. You could not treat me like that."

"And how are you proposing to treat me?"

"But, papa, in whatever way I do it, I must do it. I do not say to-day or to-morrow; but it must be the intention and purpose of my life, and I must declare that it is, everywhere. I have made up my mind about it. I am engaged to him, and I shall always say so,--unless he breaks it. I don't care a bit about fortune. I thought I did once, but I have changed all that."

"Because this scoundrel has talked sedition to you."

"He is not a scoundrel, papa, and he has not talked sedition. I don't know what sedition is. I thought it meant treason, and I'm sure he is not a traitor. He has made me love him, and I shall be true to him."

Hereupon Sir Marmaduke began almost to weep. There came first a half-smothered oath and then a sob, and he walked about the room, and struck the table with his fist, and rubbed his bald head impatiently with his hand. "Nora," he said, "I thought you were so different from this! If I had believed this of you, you never should have come to England with Emily."

"It is too late for that now, papa."

"Your mamma always told me that you had such excellent ideas about marriage."

"So I have,--I think," said she, smiling.

"She always believed that you would make a match that would be a credit to the family."

"I tried it, papa;--the sort of match that you mean. Indeed I was mercenary enough in what I believed to be my views of life. I meant to marry a rich man,--if I could, and did not think much whether I should love him or not. But when the rich man came--"

"What rich man?"

"I suppose mamma has told you about Mr. Glasc.o.c.k."

"Who is Mr. Glasc.o.c.k? I have not heard a word about Mr. Glasc.o.c.k."

Then Nora was forced to tell her story,--was called upon to tell it with all its aggravating details. By degrees Sir Marmaduke learned that this Mr. Glasc.o.c.k, who had desired to be his son-in-law, was in very truth the heir to the Peterborough t.i.tle and estates,--would have been such a son-in-law as almost to compensate, by the brilliance of the connection, for that other unfortunate alliance. He could hardly control his agony when he was made to understand that this embryo peer had in truth been in earnest. "Do you mean that he went down after you into Devonshire?"

"Yes, papa."

"And you refused him then,--a second time?"

"Yes, papa."

"Why;--why;--why? You say yourself that you liked him;--that you thought that you would accept him."

"When it came to speaking the word, papa, I found that I could not pretend to love him when I did not love him. I did not care for him,--and I liked somebody else so much better! I just told him the plain truth,--and so he went away."

The thought of all that he had lost, of all that might so easily have been his, for a time overwhelmed Sir Marmaduke, and drove the very memory of Hugh Stanbury almost out of his head. He could understand that a girl should not marry a man whom she did not like; but he could not understand how any girl should not love such a suitor as was Mr. Glasc.o.c.k. And had she accepted this pearl of men, with her position, with her manners and beauty and appearance, such a connection would have been as good as an a.s.sured marriage for every one of Sir Marmaduke's numerous daughters. Nora was just the woman to look like a great lady, a lady of high rank,--such a lady as could almost command men to come and throw themselves at her unmarried sisters' feet. Sir Marmaduke had believed in his daughter Nora, had looked forward to see her do much for the family; and, when the crash had come upon the Trevelyan household, had thought almost as much of her injured prospects as he had of the misfortune of her sister.

But now it seemed that more than all the good things of what he had dreamed had been proposed to this unruly girl, in spite of that great crash,--and had been rejected! And he saw more than this,--as he thought. These good things would have been accepted had it not been for this rascal of a penny-a-liner, this friend of that other rascal Trevelyan, who had come in the way of their family to destroy the happiness of them all! Sir Marmaduke, in speaking of Stanbury after this, would constantly call him a penny-a-liner, thinking that the contamination of the penny communicated itself to all transactions of the Daily Record.

"You have made your bed for yourself, Nora, and you must lie upon it."

"Just so, papa."

"I mean that, as you have refused Mr. Glasc.o.c.k's offer, you can never again hope for such an opening in life."

"Of course I cannot. I am not such a child as to suppose that there are many Mr. Glasc.o.c.ks to come and run after me. And if there were ever so many, papa, it would be no good. As you say, I have chosen for myself, and I must put up with it. When I see the carriages going about in the streets, and remember how often I shall have to go home in an omnibus, I do think about it a good deal."

"I'm afraid you will think when it is too late."

"It isn't that I don't like carriages, papa. I do like them; and pretty dresses, and brooches, and men and women who have nothing to do, and b.a.l.l.s, and the opera; but--I love this man, and that is more to me than all the rest. I cannot help myself, if it were ever so.

Papa, you mustn't be angry with me. Pray, pray, pray do not say that horrid word again."

This was the end of the interview. Sir Marmaduke found that he had nothing further to say. Nora, when she reached her last prayer to her father, referring to that curse with which he had threatened her, was herself in tears, and was leaning on him with her head against his shoulder. Of course he did not say a word which could be understood as sanctioning her engagement with Stanbury. He was as strongly determined as ever that it was his duty to save her from the perils of such a marriage as that. But, nevertheless, he was so far overcome by her as to be softened in his manners towards her. He kissed her as he left her, and told her to go to her mother. Then he went out and thought of it all, and felt as though Paradise had been opened to his child and she had refused to enter the gate.