“Well, I have been thinking about it, at any rate, uncle.”
“That’s very good of you; that will save me the trouble; and perhaps save Miss Gresham too. If you have thought it over thoroughly, that will do for all.”
“I believe Mr Moffat is a man of no family.”
“He’ll mend in that point, no doubt, when he has got a wife.”
“Uncle, you’re a goose; and what is worse, a very provoking goose.”
“Niece, you’re a gander; and what is worse, a very silly gander. What is Mr Moffat’s family to you and me? Mr Moffat has that which ranks above family honours. He is a very rich man.”
“Yes,” said Mary, “I know he is rich; and a rich man I suppose can buy anything—except a woman that is worth having.”
“A rich man can buy anything,” said the doctor; “not that I meant to say that Mr Moffat has bought Miss Gresham. I have no doubt that they will suit each other very well,” he added with an air of decisive authority, as though he had finished the subject.
But his niece was determined not to let him pass so. “Now, uncle,” said she, “you know you are pretending to a great deal of worldly wisdom, which, after all, is not wisdom at all in your eyes.”
“Am I?”
“You know you are: and as for the impropriety of discussing Miss Gresham’s marriage—”
“I did not say it was improper.”
“Oh, yes, you did; of course such things must be discussed. How is one to have an opinion if one does not get it by looking at the things which happen around us?”
“Now I am going to be blown up,” said Dr Thorne.
“Dear uncle, do be serious with me.”
“Well, then, seriously, I hope Miss Gresham will be very happy as Mrs Moffat.”
“Of course you do: so do I. I hope it as much as I can hope what I don’t at all see ground for expecting.”
“People constantly hope without any such ground.”
“Well, then, I’ll hope in this case. But, uncle—”
“Well, my dear?”
“I want your opinion, truly and really. If you were a girl—”
“I am perfectly unable to give any opinion founded on so strange an hypothesis.”
“Well; but if you were a marrying man.”
“The hypothesis is quite as much out of my way.”
“But, uncle, I am a girl, and perhaps I may marry;—or at any rate think of marrying some day.”
“The latter alternative is certainly possible enough.”
“Therefore, in seeing a friend taking such a step, I cannot but speculate on the matter as though I were myself in her place. If I were Miss Gresham, should I be right?”
“But, Minnie, you are not Miss Gresham.”
“No, I am Mary Thorne; it is a very different thing, I know. I suppose I might marry any one without degrading myself.”
It was almost illnatured of her to say this; but she had not meant to say it in the sense which the sounds seemed to bear. She had failed in being able to bring her uncle to the point she wished by the road she had planned, and in seeking another road, she had abruptly fallen into unpleasant places.
“I should be very sorry that my niece should think so,” said he; “and am sorry, too, that she should say so. But, Mary, to tell the truth, I hardly know at what you are driving. You are, I think, not so clear minded—certainly, not so clear worded—as is usual with you.”
“I will tell you, uncle;” and, instead of looking up into his face, she turned her eyes down on the green lawn beneath her feet.
“Well, Minnie, what is it?” and he took both her hands in his.
“I think that Miss Gresham should not marry Mr Moffat. I think so because her family is high and noble, and because he is low and ignoble. When one has an opinion on such matters, one cannot but apply it to things and people around one; and having applied my opinion to her, the next step naturally is to apply it to myself. Were I Miss Gresham, I would not marry Mr Moffat though he rolled in gold. I know where to rank Miss Gresham. What I want to know is, where I ought to rank myself?”
They had been standing when she commenced her last speech; but as she finished it, the doctor moved on again, and she moved with him. He walked on slowly without answering her; and she, out of her full mind, pursued aloud the tenor of her thoughts.
“If a woman feels that she would not lower herself by marrying in a rank beneath herself, she ought also to feel that she would not lower a man that she might love by allowing him to marry into a rank beneath his own—that is, to marry her.”
“That does not follow,” said the doctor quickly. “A man raises a woman to his own standard, but a woman must take that of the man she marries.”
Again they were silent, and again they walked on, Mary holding her uncle’s arm with both her hands. She was determined, however, to come to the point, and after considering for a while how best she might do it, she ceased to beat any longer about the bush, and asked him a plain question.
“The Thornes are as good a family as the Greshams, are they not?”
“In absolute genealogy they are, my dear. That is, when I choose to be an old fool and talk of such matters in a sense different from that in which they are spoken of by the world at large, I may say that the Thornes are as good, or perhaps better, than the Greshams, but I should be sorry to say so seriously to any one. The Greshams now stand much higher in the county than the Thornes do.”
“But they are of the same class.”
“Yes, yes; Wilfred Thorne of Ullathorne, and our friend the squire here, are of the same class.”
“But, uncle, I and Augusta Gresham—are we of the same class?”
“Well, Minnie, you would hardly have me boast that I am the same class with the squire—I, a poor country doctor?”
“You are not answering me fairly, dear uncle; dearest uncle, do you not know that you are not answering me fairly? You know what I mean. Have I a right to call the Thornes of Ullathorne my cousins?”
“Mary, Mary, Mary!” said he after a minute’s pause, still allowing his arm to hang loose, that she might hold it with both her hands. “Mary, Mary, Mary! I would that you had spared me this!”
“I could not have spared it to you for ever, uncle.”
“I would that you could have done so; I would that you could!”
“It is over now, uncle: it is told now. I will grieve you no more. Dear, dear, dearest! I should love you more than ever now; I would, I would, I would if that were possible. What should I be but for you? What must I have been but for you?” And she threw herself on his breast, and clinging with her arms round his neck, kissed his forehead, cheeks, and lips.
There was nothing more said then on the subject between them. Mary asked no further question, nor did the doctor volunteer further information. She would have been most anxious to ask about her mother’s history had she dared to do so; but she did not dare to ask; she could not bear to be told that her mother had been, perhaps was, a worthless woman. That she was truly a daughter of a brother of the doctor, that she did know. Little as she had heard of her relatives in her early youth, few as had been the words which had fallen from her uncle in her hearing as to her parentage, she did know this, that she was the daughter of Henry Thorne, a brother of the doctor, and a son of the old prebendary. Trifling little things that had occurred, accidents which could not be prevented, had told her