Only wish me joy, and
all will be pleasant."
"Lady Laura, I do wish you joy, with all my heart,--but that will not
make all things pleasant. I came up here to ask you to be my wife."
"No;--no, no; do not say it."
"But I have said it, and will say it again. I, poor, penniless, plain
simple fool that I am, have been ass enough to love you, Lady Laura
Standish; and I brought you up here to-day to ask you to share with
me--my nothingness. And this I have done on soil that is to be all
your own. Tell me that you regard me as a conceited fool,--as a
bewildered idiot."
"I wish to regard you as a dear friend,--both of my own and of my
husband," said she, offering him her hand.
"Should I have had a chance, I wonder, if I had spoken a week since?"
"How can I answer such a question, Mr. Finn? Or, rather, I will,
answer it fully. It is not a week since we told each other, you to
me and I to you, that we were both poor,--both without other means
than those which come to us from our fathers. You will make your
way;--will make it surely; but how at present could you marry any
woman unless she had money of her own? For me,--like so many other
girls, it was necessary that I should stay at home or marry some one
rich enough to dispense with fortune in a wife.
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