own after you into Devonshire?"
"Yes, papa."
"And you refused him then,--a second time?"
"Yes, papa."
"Why;--why;--why? You say yourself that you liked him;--that you
thought that you would accept him."
"When it came to speaking the word, papa, I found that I could not
pretend to love him when I did not love him. I did not care for
him,--and I liked somebody else so much better! I just told him the
plain truth,--and so he went away."
The thought of all that he had lost, of all that might so easily have
been his, for a time overwhelmed Sir Marmaduke, and drove the very
memory of Hugh Stanbury almost out of his head. He could understand
that a girl should not marry a man whom she did not like; but he
could not understand how any girl should not love such a suitor
as was Mr. Glascock. And had she accepted this pearl of men, with
her position, with her manners and beauty and appearance, such a
connection would have been as good as an assured marriage for every
one of Sir Marmaduke's numerous daughters. Nora was just the woman to
look like a great lady, a lady of high rank,--such a lady as could
almost command men to come and throw themselves at her unmarried
sisters' feet. Sir Marmaduke had believed in his daughter Nora, had
looked forward to see her do much for the family; and, when the crash
had come upon the Trevelyan household, had thought almost as much
of her injured prospects as he had of the misfortune of her sister.
But now it seemed that more than all the good things of what he had
dreamed had been proposed to this unruly girl, in spite of that great
crash,--and had been rejected! And he saw more than this,--as he
thought. These good things would have been accepted had it not been
for this rascal of a penny-a-liner, this friend of that other rascal
Trevelyan, who had come in the way of their family to destroy the
happiness of them all! Sir Marmaduke, in speaking of Stanbury after
this, would constantly call him a penny-a-liner, thinking that the
contamination of the penny communicated itself to all transactions of
the Daily Record.
"You have made your bed for yourself, Nora, and you must lie upon
it."
"Just so, papa."
"I mean that, as you have refused Mr. Glascock's offer, you can never
again hope for such an opening in life."
"Of course I cannot. I am not such a child as to suppose that there
are many Mr. Glascocks to come and run after me. And if there were
ever so many, papa, it would b
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