“Yes, but fortunately I am very well acquainted with you all, so that I need have no scruple in speaking the truth to you,” Kitty pointed out. “I don’t want Uncle Matthew’s odious fortune, and as for marrying any gentleman who offered for me only because I have the advantage of a handsome dependance, I would rather wear the willow all my days! And let me tell you, Hugh, that I did not think that you would do such a thing!”

The Rector, not unnaturally, was a little confounded by this sudden attack, and made her no immediate reply. Lord Dolphinton, who had listened intently to what she had to say, was pleased to find that he was able to elucidate. “Shouldn’t have come,” he told his rigid cousin. “Not the thing for a man in orders. George shouldn’t have come either. Not in orders, but not invited.”

“Not want to inherit a fortune!” exclaimed Biddenden, the enormity of such a declaration making it possible for him to ignore Dolphinton’s unwelcome intrusion into the argument. “Pooh! nonsense! You do not know what you are saying!”

“On the contrary,” said the Rector, making a recovery, “her sentiments do her honour! My dear Kitty, none is more conscious than myself of what must be your reflections upon this occasion. Indeed, you must believe that I share them! That my great-uncle would make me the recipient of his fortune was a thought that has never crossed my head: if I have ever indulged my brain with speculations on the nature of his intentions, I have supposed that he would bequeath to his adopted child a respectable independance, and the residue of his estate to that member of the family whom we know to be his favourite great-nephew. None of us, I fancy, could have called in question the propriety of such a disposition; none of us can have imagined that he would, whatever the event, have left that adopted child destitute upon the world.” He saw the startled look in Miss Charing’s eyes, and said, with great gentleness: “That, dearest Kitty, is what he has assured us he will do, should we or you refuse to obey his—I do not scruple to say—monstrous command!”

“Destitute?” repeated Kitty, as though the word were unknown.

Lord Biddenden pulled a chair forward, and sat down beside her, possessing himself of one of her hands, and patting it. “Yes, Kitty, that is the matter in a nutshell,” he said. “I do not wonder that you should look shocked! Your repugnance must be shared by any man of sensibility. The melancholy truth is that you were not born to an independance; your father—a man of excellent family, of course!—was improvident; but for the generosity of my uncle in adopting you, you must have been reared in such conditions as we will not dwell upon—a stranger to all the elegancies of life, a penniless orphan without a protector to lend you consequence! My dear Kitty, you might even have counted yourself fortunate today to have found yourself in such a situation as Miss Fishguard’s!”

It was plain, from the impressive dropping of his voice, that he had described to her the lowest depths in which his fancy was capable of imagining her. His solemn manner had its effect; she looked instinctively towards the Rector, upon whose judgment she had been accustomed, of late years, to depend.

“I cannot say that it is untrue,” Hugh responded, in a low tone. “Indeed, I must acknowledge that whatever may be my uncle’s conduct today, however improper in my eyes, you are very much beholden to him for his generosity in the past.”

She pulled her hand out of Lord Biddenden’s warm, plump clasp, and jumped up, saying impulsively: “I hope I am not ungrateful, but when you speak of generosity I feel as though my heart must burst!”

“Kitty, Kitty, do not talk in that intemperate style!” Hugh said.

“No, no, but you do not understand!” she cried. “You speak of his fortune, and you know it to be large! Everyone says that, but I have no cause to suspect it! If he yielded to a generous impulse when he adopted me, at least he has atoned for that during all these years! No, Hugh, I won’t hush! Ask poor Fish what wage she has received from him for educating me! Ask her what shifts she has often and often been put to to contrive that I should not be dressed in rags! Well, perhaps not rags, precisely, but only look at this gown I am wearing now!”

All three gentlemen obeyed her, but perhaps only Lord Biddenden recognized the justice of her complaint. Hugh said: “You look very well, Kitty, I assure you. There is a neatness and a propriety—”

“I do not want neatness and propriety!” interrupted Kitty, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes sparkling. “I want elegant dresses, and I want to have my hair cut in the first style of fashion, and I want to go to assemblies, and rout-parties, and to the theatre, and to the Opera, and not—not!— to be a poor little squab of a dowdy!”

Again, only Biddenden was able to appreciate her feelings. “Very understandable!” he said. “It is not at all to be wondered at. Why, you have been kept so cooped-up here that I daresay you may never have attended so much as a concert!”

“Very true,” Hugh concurred. “I have frequently observed to my uncle that the indulgence of some degree of rational amusement should be granted to you, Kitty. Alas, I fear that his habits and prejudices are fixed! I cannot flatter myself that my words have borne weight with him.”

“Exactly so!” Biddenden said. “And so it must always be while you remain under this roof, Kitty! However little you may relish the manner of my uncle’s proposals, you must perceive all the advantages attached to an eligible marriage. You will have a position of the first respectability; you will be mistress of a very pretty establishment, able to order things as you choose; with the habits of economy you have learnt you will find yourself at the outset most comfortably circumstanced; and in the course of time you will be able to command every imaginable extravagance.”

From his lengthening upper lip it was to be deduced that this sketch of the future made little appeal to the Rector. He said: “I do Kitty the justice to believe that the tone of her mind is too nice to allow of her hankering after extravagance. I am not a Puritan; I sympathize to the full in her desire to escape from the restrictions imposed upon her by my uncle’s valetudinarian habits—”

“Oh!” cried Kitty wistfully, “I should like so much to be extravagant!”

“You will allow me to know you better than you know yourself, dear Kitty,” responded Hugh, with great firmness. “Most naturally, you desire to become better acquainted with the world. You would like to visit the Metropolis, I daresay, and so you shall! You yearn to taste the pleasures enjoyed by those persons who constitute what is known as the ton. It is only proper that you should do so. I venture to prophesy that in a very short space of time you would find many of these pleasures hollow cheats. But do not imagine that if you were to bestow your hand upon me in marriage you would find me opposed to the occasional gratification of your wish for more gaiety than is to be found in a country parish! I am no enemy to the innocent recreation of dancing; I have frequently derived no small enjoyment from a visit to the playhouse; and while I must always hold gaming in abhorrence I am not so bigoted that I cannot play a tolerable game of whist, or quadrille, or bear my part in a private loo-party.”

“Hugh,” interrupted Kitty, “George must have constrained you to make me this offer!”

“I assure you, upon my honour, it is not so!”

“You don’t wish me to be your wife! You—you don’t love me!” she said, in a suffocating voice, and with tears starting to her eyes.

He replied stiffly: “My regard for you is most sincere. Since I was inducted into a parish, not so far distant as to make it impossible for me frequently to visit my great-uncle, I have had ample opportunity of observing you, and to my regard has been added respect. I am persuaded that there is nothing in your character which could preclude your becoming a most eligible wife to any man in orders.”

She gazed up at him in astonishment. “I?” she exclaimed. “When you have been for ever scolding me for levity, and frowning every time I don’t mind my tongue to your liking, and telling me I ought not to be discontented with my lot? How can you talk so?”

He possessed himself of her hand, saying, with a smile: “These are the faults of youth, Kitty. I own, I have tried to guide you: it was never my intention to scold!”

“If you are not constrained by George, it must be by Uncle Matthew!” she declared, snatching her hand away.

“Yes, in some sort,” he replied. “It is hard for you to understand the motives—”

“No, I assure you!”

“Yes,” he said steadily. “You must know, Kitty—you must realize, however painful it may be—that George has spoken only the truth. Your whole dependance is upon my uncle; were he to die, leaving you unwed, unbetrothed to one of us, your situation must be desperate indeed. I hesitate to wound you, but I must tell you that, the world being what it is, a respectable marriage is hard to achieve for a dowerless and orphaned female. What could you do to maintain yourself, if left alone upon the world? George has spoken of such a position as that held by Miss Fishguard, but surely without reflection! Miss Fishguard is an excellent woman, but she is lacking in such accomplishments as a governess, seeking employment in the first circles, is today expected to impart to her pupils. Her knowledge is not profound; her performance upon the pianoforte is not superior; she has no skill with Water Colours; little mastery over the French tongue; none at all over the Italian.”