A Fair Emigrant, Chapter XXXVI-XXXVIII [pp. 485-508]

A FAIR EMI.GRANT.
yet ought she to venture to encourage him? Poverty is a stern
fact. She must think of his honorable ambition.
"My lad," she said, "my heart goes with you. But think a
little of your future. You had plans of your own. You hoped
to be of use in your generation. Will marriage compensate you
for all you will give up?"
Rory passed his hand across his brow, and thought a moment
before he replied:
"When I formed those plans I did not expect to meet in this
way the one woman I could mate with; and, though you affec tionately call me your lad, I have met her at a ripe age. I love
her more, after all, than Parliament and the emigrants, though I
do not mean to say that I lose sight of a career of usefulness
among the possibilities of the future. According to my theory
a noble wife will help a man more greatly than gold. And now,
dear Gran, you must go to your rest. Trouble your head no
more about Flora's inventions."
After she had left him Rory sat gazing at the wall with the
eyes of a man considering a hateful contingency. He had
spoken bravely, for he would share his uneasiness with no one;
nevertheless was it not true that he knew absolutely nothing of
this woman who had gained such a hold upon his life? His
memory went back to her conversation,on board the steamer,
and revived the strong impression he had then received that
some painful circumstance which she would not allow to be dig
covered influenced her movements and obliged her to reject hbis
friendship. She had certainly stated that she was not married.
He remembered with what evident surprise she had answered
his question on the subject. Could she, after all, have deceived
him? Could some strong and terrible dread have driven her to
a falsehood under which she might have thought herself justified
in taking shelter? Never for one moment, he admitted, had she
given him to suppose that she might alter from the mood of
mind in which she had rejected him as a husband. Latterly
he had comfortably made up his mind to forget those strong
first impressions which had seized him on board ship and had
seemed to surround her witb mystery and place her in imminent
danger. And now he asked himself, What if they had been true,
if behind her frank, smilivg aspect there lay the consciousness of
some erring or tragic past which practically deprived him of a
future? After all, itbat had brought her here, with her beauty
and her breeding, to bury herself, if not some necessity for escape, to hide herself from something?
492
[July,.