My own fortune is gone; the miserable forfeit due to me, if Evelyn continues to reject my suit, when she has arrived at the age of eighteen, is deeply mortgaged.

I am engaged in vast and daring schemes, in which I may either rise to the highest station or lose that which I now hold.

In either case, how necessary to me is wealth: in the one instance, to maintain my advancement; in the other, to redeem my fall." "But did you not tell me," said Caroline, "that Evelyn proposed and promised to place her fortune at your disposal, even while rejecting your hand ?" "Absurd mockery!" exclaimed Vargrave; "the foolish boast of a girl,--an impulse liable to every caprice.

Can you suppose that when she launches into the extravagance natural to her age and necessary to her position, she will not find a thousand demands upon her rent-roll not dreamed of now; a thousand vanities and baubles that will soon erase my poor and hollow claim from her recollection?
Can you suppose that, if she marry another, her husband will ever consent to a child's romance?
And even were all this possible, were it possible that girls were not extravagant, and that husbands had no common-sense, is it for me, Lord Vargrave, to be a mendicant upon reluctant bounty,--a poor cousin, a pensioned led-captain?
Heaven knows I have as little false pride as any man, but still this is a degradation I cannot stoop to.

Besides, Caroline, I am no miser, no Harpagon: I do not want wealth for wealth's sake, but for the advantages it bestows,--respect, honour, position; and these I get as the husband of the great heiress.