"I am sorry, Sir John, I am grieved to be supposed to sacrifice--to sell my poor children. I seek their good, I wish them to marry well, as I married myself, but you are harsh to call them victims. I have done my duty by them; I have obtained excellent establishments for my three eldest, and received congratulations from my friends. I really cannot receive your reproach." "Then why are they to dissipate thought, Gertrude, and fly from reflection?" "I'm sure I don't know, my love. One is not always prepared with reasons in an instant: marriage brings cares. They will have the same anxieties about their children's establishments that I have endured. I suppose that was my meaning. I really can't tell; but you frighten me with such violent expressions." "Gertrude," said Sir John, seriously, "let all painful thoughts and subjects be banished between us. I exact one promise from you." "My dear love, I never made a promise in my life." "Then let it be made now, and stand in your mind in its singleness and sacred meaning." "A promise would overcharge my heart, and burst from my lips, Sir John. I hate promises." "Yet you promised at the altar, Gertrude, to love and honour, and obey your husband." "These are words of course, love, and mean that people are to jog on as well as they can together: but what do you require in the shape of a promise?" "I require your assurance that you will for ever renounce all idea of a son-in-law as far as Sir Foster Kerrison is concerned." "Do you know, love, I see the hand of Boscawen in your determined dislike of Kerrison. That man has enormous influence with you; and when he married a woman young enough to be his granddaughter, it ought to have silenced him upon the subject of matrimony. Lady Ennismore has heard my reasons in favour of Sir Foster, and it was but yesterday I was speaking upon the subject with her ladyship. Lady Ennismore has returned in high feather from Bedinfield, my love, and looks nearly as young as Julia; does she not? She assured me Thursday would be the brightest day in her calendar of pleasures. I am sure it will be a day of proud delight to me!" "I will not allow you to include Sir Foster Kerrison in the bridal party, Gertrude. I wish you to understand that I object to every species of intimacy with the Ripley family." "My dear John, why did you not express your wishes earlier? I have indeed asked that pretty, cheerful creature, Lucy Kerrison, to spend a few days with Clara when she loses her sisters, and I felt obliged to include her father in the wedding arrangements. I am sorry your odd ways of thinking prevent so many agreeable circumstances from becoming valued, but so it is, and I cannot decline Sir Foster's society without a cogent reason to apologise for my change of manner." "I only object to the man on Clara's account," replied Sir John, considerably annoyed at the intelligence.