So Roland went back to his inn with a promise that made him
light-hearted. "Elizabeth has done me one good turn," he soliloquized.
"Now let me see. I will consider my plea and get all in order. First,
I must persuade Denas to go to London. Second, the question is,
marriage or no marriage? Third, her voice and its cultivation. Fourth,
the hundred pounds in St. Merryn's Bank. Fifth, everything as soon as
can be--to-morrow night if possible. Sixth, my own money from
Tremaine. I should have about four hundred pounds. Heigho! I wish it
was eight o'clock. And what an old cat Priscilla is! I do not think I
shall give her the fifty pounds I promised her. She does not deserve
it--and she never durst ask me for it."
CHAPTER VII.
IS THERE ANY SORROW LIKE LOVING?
"For love the sense of right and wrong confounds;
Strong love and proud ambition have no bounds."
--DRYDEN.
"The fate of love is such
That still it sees too little or too much."
--DRYDEN.
"Fate ne'er strikes deep but when unkindness joins.
But there's a fate in kindness,
Still to be least returned where most 'tis given."
--DRYDEN.
Lovers see miracles, or think they ought to. Roland expected all his
own world to turn to his love. The self-denying, forbearing, loyal
affection Elizabeth had shown him all her life was now of no value,
since she did not sympathize with his love for Denas. John and Joan
Penelles were the objects of his dislike and scorn because they could
not see their daughter's future as he saw it. He thought it only right
that Priscilla Mohun should risk her business and her reputation for
the furtherance of his romantic love affair. He had easily persuaded
himself that it was utterly contemptible in her to expect any
financial reward for a service of love.
Denas had more force of character. She was offended at Elizabeth
because Elizabeth had wounded her self-respect and put her into a most
humiliating position. She was too truthful not to admit that Elizabeth
had from the first hour of their acquaintance openly opposed anything
like love-making between Roland and herself. She understood and
acknowledged the rights of her parents. In trampling on them she knew
that she was sinning with her eyes open. And if Roland spent the day
in arranging his plans for the future, she spent it in facing squarely
the thing she had determined to do.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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