“I am afraid I have talked too much, I am not very strong, yet with your permission we will adjourn this discussion to another day--in the meantime I will write to my uncle.”
Mr. Brookes did not offer the assistance of his arm, and had he, Frank would certainly not have accepted it. Holding the door, the old man waited for his visitor to pass out. “Southdown Road or the heir to a peerage: it is all the same, my money is what is wanted--the money I had made myself,” thought Mr. Brookes. “Dreadful old man, he would sell his daughter for a settlement of a few hundred pounds a year. I never knew he was so bad, my eyes are opened,” thought Frank. Both were equally angry, and without secrecy or subterfuge they sought consolation in different parts of the garden. Mr. Brookes resumed his walk on the tennis ground with Berkins, and stopping frequently to point to his glass-houses, he described his misfortunes with profuse waves of his stick. Frank had found Maggie, and they now walked together in the shade and silence of the sycamores--he, vehement and despairing of the future; she, subtle and strangely confident that things would happen as she wished them.
Having once yielded and felt the pang of possession she was wholly his, in all ramifications of spirit and flesh, both in her brain and blood, and the utmost ends of her sense mingled with him. But to him, she was the symbol of the desire of which he was enamoured, the desire which held together his nature and gave it individuality--love of _the_ young girl.
“Oh! my darling, if he should speak so to Mount Rorke, we should be parted for ever--no, that could never be--nothing in heaven or earth would induce me to give you up, be true to me and I will be true to you; but our happiness--no, not our happiness, that is in ourselves--but all our prospects in life will be wrecked if he will not give way. Should he and Mount Rorke meet--”
“But they won't meet; have patience--I know how to manage father. He doesn't like to part with his money, and I can understand it, he made it all himself; but he will get used to the idea in time, leave him to me; put your trust in me.”
She extended her hand, he took it, pressed it to his lips; he took her in his arms and kissed her, and the leaves of the sycamores were filled with the sunset.