The Maid of Maiden Lane

"This time I am desperately, and really, in love."

"So you were with Mollie Trefuses, with Sarah Talbot, with Eliza Capel, with Matilda Howard--and a galaxy of minor beauties."

"But it has come to this--I wish to marry Miss Moran; and I never wished to marry any other woman."

"You have forgotten--And by Heaven! you must forget Miss Moran. She is not to be thought of as a wife--for one moment."

"Sir, you are not so unjust as to make such a statement without giving me a reason for it."

"Giving you a reason! My reason ought to have sprung up voluntary in your own heart. It is an incredible thing if you are not already familiar with it."

"Simply, sir, I profess my ignorance."

"Look around you. Look east, and west, and north, and south,--all these rich lands were bought with your Uncle William's money. He made himself poor, to make me rich; because, having brought me up as his heir, he thought his marriage late in life had in a manner defrauded me. You know that the death of his two sons has again made me the heir to the Hyde earldom; and that after me, the succession is yours. Tell me now what child is left to your uncle?"

"Only his daughter Annie, a girl of fourteen or fifteen years."

"What will become of her when her father dies?"

"Sir, how can I divine her future?"

"It is your duty to divine her future. Her father has no gold to leave her--he gave it to me--and the land he cannot leave her; yet she has a natural right, beyond either mine or yours."

"I give her my right, cheerfully."

"You cannot give it to her--unless you outlaw yourself from your native country--strip yourself of your citizenship--declare yourself unworthy to be a son of the land that gave you birth. Even if you perpetrated such a civil crime, you would render no service to Annie. Your right would simply lapse to the son of Herbert Hyde--the young man you met at Oxford--"

"Surely, sir, we need not talk of that fellow. I have already told you what a very sycophant he is. He licks the dust before any man of wealth or authority; his tongue hangs down to his shoe-buckles."

"Well then, sir, what is your duty to Annie Hyde?"

"I do not conceive myself to have any special duty to Annie Hyde."

"Upon my honour, you are then perversely stupid! But it is impossible that you do not realize what justice, honour, gratitude and generosity demand from you! When your uncle wrote me that pitiful letter which informed me of the death of his last son, my first thought was that his daughter must be assured her right in the succession. There is one way to compass this. You know what that way is.--Why do you not speak?"