Oh,
yes! for him and with him I would have accepted any servitude, any
suffering. Yet a secret something withheld me from saying so; and how
glad I soon was that I had kept silence!
"You make no reply, Juanita," he said. "Well, I might put on a pretence
of disinterestedness, and say that I was unwilling to bind you to such
a fate, and therefore released you from your engagement. It would not
be altogether a pretence, for nothing could be more painful to me than
to see the brightness of your youth fading away in the life I have
described. But I think of myself, too; comforts, luxuries, indulgences,
I value highly. Since my father's death I have tasted enough of poverty
to know something of its bitterness; and to be doomed to it for life is
appalling to me. The sordid cares of narrow means are so distasteful,
that I cannot contemplate them with any degree of patience. After a day
of exhausting mental effort, to return to a dingy, ill-furnished
home,--to relieve professional labors by calculations about the
gas-bill or the butcher's account,--I shrink from such a miserable
prospect! I love the elegant, the high-bred, the tasteful, in women; I
am afraid even my love for you would alter, Juanita, to see you day by
day in coarse or shabby clothing, performing such offices as are only
suited to servants,--whom we could not afford to keep.
Pages:
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76