But I must tell you
Marian's story before this business goes any farther. Will you come and
smoke your cigar with me to-night? She is going to drink tea at a
neighbour's, and we shall be alone. They are all fond of her, poor
child."
"I shall be very happy to come. And in the meantime, you will try and
ascertain the real state of her feelings without distressing her in any
way; and you will tell me the truth with all frankness, even if it is to
be a deathblow to all my hopes?"
"Even if it should be that. But I do not fear such a melancholy result. I
think Marian is sensible enough to know the value of an honest man's
heart."
Gilbert quitted the Captain in a more hopeful spirit than that in which
he had gone to the cottage that day. It was only reasonable that this man
should be the best judge of his niece's feelings.
Left alone, George Sedgewick paced the room in a meditative mood, with
his hands thrust deep into his trousers-pockets, and his gray head bent
thoughtfully.
"She must like him," he muttered to himself. "Why should not she like
him?--good-looking, generous, clever, prosperous, well-connected, and
over head and ears in love with her. Such a marriage is the very thing I
have been praying for. And without such a marriage, what would be her
fate when I am gone? A drudge and dependent in some middle-class family
perhaps--tyrannised over and tormented by a brood of vulgar children.
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