"Sophia," Mr. Northey said in his coldest manner, "I trust that there is nothing in this? I trust that your sister is misinformed?"
The girl, under the lash of her sister's tongue, had risen from her chair; she tried in vain to recover her composure.
"There was nothing, sir," she cried hysterically. "But after this-after the words which my sister has used to me, she has only herself to thank if-if I please myself, and take the gentleman she has named-or any other gentleman."
"Ay, but softly," Mr. Northey rejoined, with a certain unpleasant chill in his tone. "Softly, Sophia, if you please. Are you aware that if your brother marries under age and without his guardian's consent, he forfeits ten thousand pounds in your favour? And as much more to your sister? If not, let me tell you that it is so."
Sophia stared at him, but did not answer.
"It is true," Mr. Northey continued, "that your father's will contains no provision for your punishment in the like case. But this clause proves that he expected his children to be guided by the advice of their natural guardians; and for my part, Sophia, I expect you to be so guided. In the meantime, and that there may be no mistake in the matter, understand, if you please, that I forbid you to hold from this moment any communication with the person who has been named. If I cannot prescribe a match for you, I can at least see that you do not disgrace your family."
"Sir!" Sophia cried, her cheeks burning.
But Mr. Northey, a man of slow pulse and the least possible imagination, returned her fiery look unmoved. "I repeat it," he said coldly. "For that and nothing else an alliance with this-this person would entail. Let there be no misunderstanding on that point. You are innocent of the world, Sophia, and do not understand these distinctions. But I am within the truth when I say that Mr. Hawkesworth is known to be a broken adventurer, moving upon sufferance among persons of condition, and owning a character and antecedents that would not for a moment sustain inquiry."
"How can that be?" Sophia cried passionately. "It is not known who he is."
"He is not one of us," Mr. Northey answered with dignity. "For the rest, you are right in saying that it is not known who he is. I am told that even the name he bears is not his own."
"No, it is not!" Sophia retorted; and then stood blushing and convicted, albeit with an exultant light in her eyes. No, his name was not his own! She knew that from his own lips; and knew, too, from his own lips, in what a world of romance he moved, what a future he was preparing, what a triumph might be, nay, would be, his by-and-by-and might be hers! But her mouth was sealed; already, indeed, she had said more than she had the right to say. When Mr. Northey, surprised by her acquiescence, asked with acerbity how she knew that Hawkesworth was not the man's name, and what the man's name was, she stood mute. Wild horses should not draw that from her.
But it was natural that her brother-in-law should draw his conclusions, and his brow grew darker. "It is plain, at least, that you have admitted him to a degree of intimacy extremely improper," he said, with more heat than he had yet exhibited. "I fear, Sophia, that you are not so good a girl as I believed. However, from this moment you will see that you treat him as a stranger. Do you hear me?"
"Yes, sir. Then-then I am not to go with you this evening?"
"This evening! You mean to Vauxhall? And why not, pray?"
"Because-because, if I go I must see him. And if I see him I-I must speak to him," Sophia cried, her breast heaving with generous resentment. "I will not pass him by, and let him think me-everything that is base!"
For a moment Mr. Northey looked a little nonplussed. Then, "Well, you can-you can bow to him," he said, pluming himself on his discretion in leaving the rein a trifle slack to begin. "If he force himself upon you, you will rid yourself of him with as little delay as possible. The mode I leave to you, Sophia; but speech with him I absolutely forbid. You will obey in that on pain of my most serious displeasure."
"On pain of bread and water, miss!" her sister cried venomously. "That will have more effect, I fancy. Lord, for my part, I should die of shame if I thought that I had encouraged a nameless Irish rogue not good enough to ride behind my coach. And all the town to know it."
Rage dried the tears that hung on Sophia's lids. "Is that all?" she asked, her head high. "I should like to go if that is all you have to say to me?"
"I think that is all," Mr. Northey answered.
"Then-I may go?"
He appeared to hesitate. For the first time his manner betrayed doubt; he looked at his wife and opened his mouth, then closed it. At length, "Yes, I think so," he said pompously. "And I trust you will regain our approbation by doing as we wish, Sophia. I am sorry to say that your brother's conduct at Cambridge has not been all that we could desire. I hope that you will see to it, and show yourself more circumspect. I truly hope that you will not disappoint us. Yes, you may go."
Sophia waited for no second permission. Her heart bursting, her cheeks burning, she hurried from the room, and flew up the stairs to shut herself in her chamber. Here, on the second floor, in a room consecrated to thoughts of him and dreams of him, where in a secret nook behind the bow-fronted drawer of her toilet table lay the withered flower he had given her the day he stole her glove, she felt the full wretchedness of her lot. She would see him no more! Her tears gushed forth, her bosom heaved at the thought. She would see him no more! Or worse, she would see him only in public, at a distance; whence his eyes would stab her for a jilt, a flirt, a cold, heartless, worldly creature, unworthy to live in the same world, unworthy to breathe the same air with Constancy.
And he had been so good to her! He had been so watchful, so assiduous, so delicate, she had fondly, foolishly deemed his court a secret from all.
The way to her heart had not been difficult. Her father's death had cast her, a timid country girl, into the vortex of the town, where for a time she had shrunk from the whirl of routs and masquerades, the smirking beaux and loud-voiced misses, among whom she found herself. She had sat mum and abashed in companies where her coarser sister ruled and ranted; where one had shunned and another had flouted the silent, pale-faced girl, whose eyes and hair and tall slender shape just redeemed her from insignificance. Only Mr. Hawkesworth, the Irishman, had discerned in her charms that in a remarkably short time won his regards and fixed his attentions. Only he, with the sensibility of an unspoiled Irish heart, had penetrated the secret of her loneliness; and in company had murmured sympathy in her ear, and at the opera, where he had not the entrée to her sister's box, had hung on her looks from afar, speaking more sweetly with his fine eyes than Monticelli or Amorevoli sang on the stage.
For Sir Hervey, his would-be rival, the taciturn, middle-aged man, who was Hervey to half the men about town, and Coke to three-fourths of the women; who gamed with the same nonchalance with which he made his court-he might be the pink of fashion in his dull mooning way, but he had nothing that caught her eighteen-year-old fancy. On the contrary he had a habit of watching her, when Hawkesworth was present, at the mere remembrance of which her cheek flamed. For that alone, and in any event, she hated him; and would never, never marry him. They might rob her of her dear Irishman; they might break her heart-so her thoughts ran to the tremolo of a passionate sob; they might throw her into a decline; but they should never, never compel her to take him! She would live on bread and water for a year first. She was fixed, fixed, fixed on that, and would ever remain so.
Meanwhile downstairs the two who remained in the room she had left kept silence until her footsteps ceased to sound on the stairs. Then Mr. Northey permitted his discontent to appear. "I wish, after all, I had told her," he said, moving restlessly in his chair. "Hang it, ma'am, do you hear?" he continued, looking irritably at his wife, "I wish I had taken my own line, and that is a fact."
"Then you wish you had been