Thoughts crowded quick into the mind of Sir Harry¹ Hotspur as he had himself driven over to Penrith. It was a dull, dreary² day in November, and he took the close carriage. The distance was about ten miles, and he had therefore something above an hour for thinking. When men think much, they can rarely decide. The affairs as to which a man has once acknowledged to himself that he may be either wise or foolish, prudent³ or imprudent, are seldom matters on which he can by any amount of thought bring himself to a purpose which to his own eyes shall be clearly correct. When he can decide without thinking, then he can decide without a doubt, and with perfect satisfaction. But in this matter Sir Harry thought much. There had been various times at which he was quite sure that it was his duty to repudiate⁴ this cousin utterly⁵. There had never been a time at which he had been willing to accept him. Nevertheless, at this moment, with all his struggles of thought he could not resolve. Was his higher duty due to his daughter, or to his family,—and through his family to his country, which, as he believed, owed its security and glory to the maintenance of its aristocracy? Would he be justified,—justified in any degree,—in subjecting his child to danger in the hope that his name and family pride might be maintained? Might he take his own desires in that direction as any make-weight towards a compliance⁶ with his girl's strong wishes, grounded as they were on quite other reasons? Mr. Boltby had been very eager in telling him that he ought to have nothing to say to this cousin, had loaded the cousin's name with every imaginable evil epithet⁷; and of Mr. Boltby's truth and honesty there could be no doubt. But then Mr. Boltby had certainly exceeded his duty, and was of course disposed, by his professional view of the matter, to think any step the wisest which would tend to save the property from dangerous hands. Sir Harry felt that there were things to be saved of more value than the property;—the family, the title, perhaps that

分享到：