Of course I remember him. I can
remember well when they bought the land."
"It is his son."
"Surely he can hardly be worthy of her, Reg"
"And yet they say he is very worthy. I have asked about him, and he
is not a bad fellow. He keeps his money and has ideas of living
decently. He doesn't drink or gamble. But he's not a gentleman or
anything like one. I should think he never opens a book. Of course
it would be a degradation."
"And what does Mary say herself?"
"I fancy she has refused him." Then he added after a pause, "Indeed
I know she has."
"How should you know? Has she told you?" In answer to this he only
nodded his head at the old lady. "There must have been close
friendship, Reg, between you two when she told you that. I hope you
have not made her give up one suitor by leading her to love another
who does not mean to ask her."
"I certainly have not done that," said Reg. Men may often do much
without knowing that they do anything, and such probably had been
the case with Reginald Morton during the journey from Dillsborough
to Cheltenham.
"What would her father wish?"
"They all want her to take the man."
"How can she do better?"
"Would you have her marry a man who is not a gentleman, whose wife
will never be visited by other ladies; in marrying whom she would
go altogether down into another and a lower world?"
This was a matter on which Lady Ushant and her nephew had conversed
often, and he thought he knew her to be thoroughly wedded to the
privileges which she believed to be attached to her birth.
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