If you do
not relish the idea of Kate Hervey, what do you say to Jane
Harwood--there is a pretty girl for you."
"A pretty girl, sir, but not for me. But, in naming so many young
ladies, why do you overlook your own daughter?"
I said this with a sort of desperate resolution, tempted by the
opportunity, and the direction the discourse had taken. When it was
uttered, I repented of my temerity, and almost trembled to hear the
answer.
"Lucy!" exclaimed Mr. Hardinge, turning suddenly to towards me, and
looking so intently and earnestly in my face, that I saw the
possibility of such a thing then struck him, for the first time. "Sure
enough, why should you not marry Lucy? There is not a particle of
relationship between you, after all, though I have so long considered
you as brother and sister. I wish we had thought of this earlier,
Miles; it would be a most capital connection--though I should insist
on your quitting the sea. Lucy has too affectionate a heart, to be
always in distress for an absent husband. I wonder the possibility of
this thing did not strike me, before it was too late; in a man so much
accustomed to see what is going on around me, to overlook this!"
The words "too late," sounded to me like the doom of fate; and had my
simple-minded companion but the tithe of the observation which he so
much vaunted, he must have seen my agitation.
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