'Oh, mamma, do you mean me?' said Hetta, rushing across the room, and throwing herself close to her mother's side on the sofa. 'Mamma, say that you do not mean me.'
'It concerns you as well as me and him. I wish I were childless.'
'Oh, mamma, do not be cruel to me! Am I not good to you? Do I not try to be a comfort to you?'
'Then marry your cousin, Roger Carbury, who is a good man, and who can protect you. You can, at any rate, find a home for yourself, and a friend for us. You are not like Felix. You do not get drunk and gamble,--because you are a woman. But you are stiff-necked, and will not help me in my trouble.'
'Shall I marry him, mamma, without loving him?'
'Love! Have I been able to love? Do you see much of what you call love around you? Why should you not love him? He is a gentleman, and a good man,--soft-hearted, of a sweet nature, whose life would be one effort to make yours happy. You think that Felix is very bad.'
'I have never said so.'
'But ask yourself whether you do not give as much pain, seeing what you could do for us if you would. But it never occurs to you to sacrifice even a fantasy for the advantage of others.'
Hetta retired from her seat on the sofa, and when her mother again went upstairs she turned it all over in her mind. Could it be right that she should marry one man when she loved another? Could it be right that she should marry at all, for the sake of doing good to her family? This man, whom she might marry if she would,--who did in truth worship the ground on which she trod,--was, she well knew, all that her mother had said. And he was more than that. Her mother had spoken of his soft heart, and his sweet nature. But Hetta knew also that he was a man of high honour and a noble courage. In such a condition as was hers now he was the very friend whose advice she could have asked,-- had he not been the very lover who was desirous of making her his wife. Hetta felt that she could sacrifice much for her mother. Money, if she had it, she could have given, though she left herself penniless. Her time, her inclinations, her very heart's treasure, and, as she thought, her life, she could give. She could doom herself to poverty, and loneliness, and heart-rending regrets for her mother's sake. But she did not know how she could give herself into the arms of a man she did not love.