"I think she would rather get just a line to say that he is in earnest too," said Fanny.
"Why should not she like a love-letter as much as any one else?" said Kate, who had her own ideas. "Of course she has to tell him about her mamma, but what need he care for that? Of course mamma thinks that Joshua need not write to Molly, but Molly won't mind."
"I don't think anything of the kind, miss."
"And besides, Joshua lives in the next parish," said Fanny, "and has a horse to ride over on if he has anything to say."
"At any rate, I shall write," said Harry, "even at the risk of making her angry." And he did write as follows:
"MY OWN DEAR GIRL,--It is impossible that I should not send one line in answer. Put yourself in my place, and consult your own feelings. Think that you have a letter so full of love, so noble, so true, so certain to fill you with joy, and then say whether you would let it pass without a word of acknowledgment. It would be absolutely impossible. It is not very probable that I should ask you to break your engagement, which in the midst of my troubles is the only consolation I have. But when a man has a rock to stand upon like that, he does not want anything else. As long as a man has the one person necessary to his happiness to believe in him, he can put up with the ill opinion of all the others. You are to me so much that you outweigh all the world.
"I did not choose to have my secret pumped out of me by Augustus Scarborough. I can tell you the whole truth now. Mountjoy Scarborough had told me that he regarded you as affianced to him, and required me to say that I would--drop you. You know now how probable that was. He was drunk on the occasion,--had made himself purposely drunk, so as to get over all scruples,--and attacked me with his stick. Then came a scrimmage, in which he was upset. A sober man has always the best of it." I am afraid that Harry put in that little word sober for a purpose. The opportunity of declaring that he was sober was too good too be lost. "I went away and left him, certainly not dead, nor apparently much hurt. But if I told all this to Augustus Scarborough, your name must have come out. Now I should not mind. Now I might tell the truth about you,--with great pride, if occasion required it. But I couldn't do it then. What would the world have said to two men fighting in the streets about a girl, neither of whom had a right to fight about her? That was the reason why I told an untruth,--because I did not choose to fall into the trap which Augustus Scarborough had laid for me.