“It is all very well, Ida,” said the Squire, “and of course nobody can force you into a distasteful marriage, but I wish to point out one thing. You have your family to think of as well as yourself. I tell you frankly that I do not believe that as times are it will be possible to raise thirty thousand pounds to pay off the charges unless it is by the help of Edward Cossey. So if he lives—and as he has lasted so long I expect that he will live—and you refuse to go on with your engagement to him we shall be sold up, that is all; for this man Quest, confound him, will show us no mercy.”
“I know it, father,” answered Ida, “but I cannot and will not marry him, and I do not think you can expect me to do so. I became engaged, or rather promised to become engaged to him, because I thought that one woman had no right to put her own happiness before the welfare of an old family like ours, and I would have carried out that engagement at any cost. But since then, to tell you the truth,” and she blushed deeply, “not only have I learned to dislike him a great deal more, but I have come to care for some one else who also cares for me, and who therefore has a right to be considered. Think, father, what it means to a woman to sell herself into bodily and mental bondage—when she cares for another man.”
“Well, well,” said her father with some irritation, “I am no authority upon matters of sentiment; they are not in my line and I know that women have their prejudices. Still you can’t expect me to look at the matter in quite the same light as you do. And who is the gentleman? Colonel Quaritch?”
“Oh,” said the Squire, “I have nothing to say against Quaritch, indeed I like the man, but I suppose that if he has 600 pounds a year, it is every sixpence he can count on.”
“I had rather marry him upon six hundred a year than Edward Cossey upon sixty thousand.”
“Ah, yes, I have heard young women talk like that before, though perhaps they think differently afterwards. Of course I have no right to obtrude myself, but when you are comfortably married, what is going to become of Honham I should like to know, and incidentally of me?”
“I don’t know, father, dear,” she answered, her eyes filling with tears; “we must trust to Providence, I suppose. I know you think me very selfish,” she went on, catching him by the arm, “but, oh, father! there are things that are worse than death to women, or, at least, to some women. I almost think that I would rather die than marry Edward Cossey, though I should have gone through with it if he had kept his word.”