"
Sir James ruminated, and took up his half-smoked cigar for counsel.
"I can't imagine, Oliver, that your mother would push her opposition to
quite that point. But, in any case, you have forgotten Miss Mallory's
own fortune."
"It has never entered into my thoughts!" cried Marsham, with an emphasis
which Sir James knew to be honest. "But, in any case, I cannot live upon
my wife. If I could not find something to do, I should certainly give up
politics."
His tone had become a little dry and bitter, his aspect gray.
Sir James surveyed him a moment--pondering.
"You will find plenty of ways out, Oliver--plenty! The sympathy of all
the world will be with you. You have won a beautiful and noble creature.
She has been brought up under a more than Greek fate. You will rescue
her from it. You will show her how to face it--and how to conquer it."
A tremor swept across Marsham's handsome mouth. But the perplexity and
depression in the face remained.
Sir James had a slight consciousness of rebuff. But it disappeared in
his own emotion. He resumed:
"She ought to be told the story--perhaps with some omissions--at once.
Her mother"--he spoke with a slow precision, forcing out the words--"was
not a bad woman.
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