“Indeed you must. He has asked me to go,
and I shall do it. You can hardly let me go alone.”
“And what will you say to Lord Rufford?”
“I don’t care for Lord Rufford. Is
he to prevent my going where I please?”
“And your father,—and the Duke,—and
the Duchess! How can you go there after all that
you have been doing since you left?”
“What do I care for the Duke and the Duchess.
It has come to that, that I care for no one.
They are all throwing me over. That little wretch
Mistletoe will do nothing. This man really loved
me. He has never treated me badly. Whether
he live or whether he die, he has been true to me.”
Then she sat and thought of it all. What would
Lord Rufford care for her father’s letter?
If her cousin Mistletoe would not stir in her behalf
what chance had she with her uncle? And, though
she had thoroughly despised her cousin, she had understood
and had unconsciously believed much that he had said
to her. “In these days one can’t
make a man marry!” What horrid days they were!
But John Morton would marry her to-morrow if he were
well,—in spite of all her ill usage!
Of course he would die and so she would again be overwhelmed;
but yet she would go and see him. As she determined
to do so there was something even in her hard callous
heart softer than the love of money and more human
than the dream of an advantageous settlement in life.
The Senator’s second Letter
In the mean time our friend the Senator, up in London,
was much distracted in his mind, finding no one to
sympathise with him in his efforts, conscious of his
own rectitude of purpose, always brave against others,
and yet with a sad doubt in his own mind whether it
could be possible that he should always be right and
everybody around him wrong.
Coming away from Mr. Mainwaring’s dinner he
had almost quarrelled with John Morton, or rather
John Morton had altogether quarrelled with him.
On their way back from Dillsborough to Bragton the
minister elect to Patagonia had told him, in so many
words, that he had misbehaved himself at the clergyman’s
house. “Did I say anything that was untrue?”
asked the Senator—“Was I inaccurate
in my statements? If so no man alive will be
more ready to recall what he has said and to ask for
pardon.” Mr. Morton endeavoured to explain
to him that it was not his statements which were at
fault so much as the opinions based on them and the
language in which those opinions were given.
But the Senator could not be made to understand that
a man had not a right to his opinions, and a right
also to the use of forcible language as long as he
abstained from personalities. “It was extremely
personal,—all that you said about the purchase
of livings,” said Morton. “How was
I to know that?” rejoined the Senator.
“When in private society I inveigh against pickpockets
I cannot imagine, sir, that there should be a pickpocket
