This course Sophy pressed very much upon her lover, with many loving entreaties and tears, for she really loved Mr. Harmer truly, and shrank from grieving him. These entreaties, however, Robert always gently, but decidedly put aside. He said that Mr. Harmer would be certain to believe the edict of society against him, would decline to grant him any opportunity of justifying himself, and would refuse to allow him to enter the house. Besides he would be just as angry at discovering the secret understanding which existed between them, as he would be at their marriage, and he would be certain to forbid all intercourse between them, and perhaps even insert a condition in his will forbidding her to marry him under pain of the forfeiture of his fortune. For Robert made no secret from Sophy that her money would be of the greatest use to them; not, as he put it, that he cared for money for its own sake, but that if they were rich they could spend their life abroad, where no scoff or sneer of society could reach them, and where they should never be disturbed by the sarcasms and whispers of the world; while they, in their turn, would be able to show society how heartily they despised it, and how well they could do without it. Sophy, in her present state of mind, thought all this very grand and heroic, and really believed that her lover spoke in a noble and disinterested manner; and as she was herself perfectly conscious of the advantages of wealth, she quite agreed that, if possible, her fortune should not be sacrificed.