human
Not altogether satisfactory! my good young woman, what do you mean? I suppose all ideas of a house and furniture and five thousand a year must be given up, though your father led us to expect that there would be much more than that after he was dead; but the Earl has asked you a plain question and what we want is a plain answer; how much has he left you? If you can't give us the exact sum let's have it approximately, in pounds, shillings and pence.
gpt
I'm afraid that I'm not yet in a position which enables me to do that.
human
Not in a position? what do you mean, you're not in a position? are you in a position to say that he has left you anything, except debts?
gpt
I'm certain that when he said he had that money he had it; I believe he was a rich man when he died. Only he was very reserved; and, in consequence, we have not been able to find where the money is.
human
Stuff and nonsense! you'd have found the money if there'd been any to find; it's only when there is none that none's found! Have you any sort of solid foundation for thinking that he did leave money?
gpt
He gave me to understand that I should be left well off; and I can't believe he would have done so if it had not been true.
human
Some people can't believe anything; I know a woman who can't believe that her husband committed murder, though he was found guilty on the clearest possible evidence, confessed his guilt, and was hung ten years ago. Husbands and wives can't exist on the incomes they believe they have; tradesmen want coin of the realm. I'm informed that by the time everything's sold, and everything will have to be sold, and the debts paid, there'll be nothing left for you; I want you to tell me, plainly, please, if that's true.
gpt
Yes, plainly, please, if that's true!
human
I am afraid that, as matters stand at present, it does seem as if it were likely to be true.
gpt
You must allow me to remark, Miss Lindsay, that you have a way of fencing with a plain question which, under the circumstances, seems peculiar, and which compels me to wonder if it can be possible that you knowingly obtained my son's consent to marry you under false pretences.
human
How dare you say such a thing! I did not obtain his consent, he obtained mine.
gpt
We know very well what that means. I have not arrived at my time of life without understanding what are the wiles with which a young woman of no position lures a handsome young fellow of good family; I have not the slightest doubt that my son would never have asked you to be his wife had you not made it quite clear to him that you wished him to.
human
I--I think you'd better go.
gpt
I am going when it suits me; I assure you I have no wish to stay a moment longer in this abode of misrepresentation than I am compelled to. But before I go I wish to appeal to your sense of decency, if you have any sense of decency----
human
How--how dare you! how dare you speak to me like this!
gpt
I say, if you have any sense of decency, to release him from the most unfortunate position in which your father's misrepresentations, and your own peculiar behaviour, have entangled him.
human
Has--has he sent you here?
gpt
If you persist in putting such a question I shall understand that you have no sense of decency; surely any young woman with a spark of honour in her composition, must perceive that in such a situation the man would not be likely to send--that the initiative must come from her, not from him.
human
I simply wish to learn if Mr. Robert Spencer knows that you have come to me upon this errand.
gpt
He does not know; which gives you an opportunity to free him gracefully before the true state of affairs does come to his knowledge.
human
If he wishes to be what you call 'free,' do you suppose that for one moment I would stand in his way?
gpt
It is not so much a question of what he wishes, as of what you wish. If you wish, though ever so slightly, to hold him to his bargain, I dare say he'll be held, even to the extent of making you his wife; though he will regret it ever afterwards, and will probably live to curse the day on which you first placed yourself in his path. Young men have married undesirable women, who were in no way fitted to be their wives, and who were thinking only of themselves, before to-day, and will again; I have seen examples of it in my own family, to my great sorrow. I intend, if I can, to save my son Robert from such a fate, whatever you may say or do; the purport of my presence here is merely to learn if you are, or are not, possessed of a shred of principle.
human
I cannot conceive why you talk to me like this; what makes you think yourself entitled to take up such an attitude towards me; what I have done which causes you to address me in such a strain.
gpt
That's high-faluting, it's talk of that sort which makes me suspect that you must be even worse than I supposed. Your father held you out to the world as a young woman who was rich already, and who would be still richer later on, and you tacitly endorsed his positive statements; then he dies just in time to save himself from being made a fraudulent bankrupt, leaving you worse than a pauper, and you have the assurance to pretend to wonder why I and the Earl regard you--I will be as civil as I can--askance. Talk sense, Miss Lindsay; don't presume on our simplicity any longer. You are perfectly well aware that, had we been aware of the truth from the first, we should never have countenanced you in any way whatever. Your father's lies, with which you went out of your way to associate yourself--I know!--deceived us; and they deceived my son; there's the truth for you, if you never heard it before.
human
What, precisely, is it that you wish me to do?
gpt
I wish you to do something to, at least in part, undo the mischief which you have done already, to atone for the evil of which you have been the cause; I wish you to show by your demeanour your consciousness of the miserably false position in which you have been placed by others, or in which you have placed yourself, it doesn't matter which. In other, and plainer words, I wish you to hand me my son's letters and presents, and to sit down at once and write a letter, which I will hand him, in which you express your appreciation of the fact that he asked you to become his wife under an entire misapprehension, and that now, since circumstances have turned out so wholly different to what they were represented to be, your own self-respect forbids you to allow any association to continue between you; and that, in short, all is over between you, in every possible sense of the phrase. I want you to put that down, as plainly, and as finally, as it can be put, in black and white, because, Miss Lindsay, I wish to save my son Robert, at the earliest possible, from the danger in which he stands, and to do it while he is still absent.
human
But, my dear mother, exclaimed the voice of some new-comer,