Osborne had his solitary cup of coffee in the drawing-room. He was very unhappy too, after his fashion. He stood on the hearth-rug pondering over his situation. He was not exactly aware how hardly his father was pressed for ready-money; the squire had never spoken to him on the subject without being angry; and many of his loose contradictory statements — all of which, however contradictory they might appear, had their basis in truth — were set down by his son to the exaggeration of passion. But it was uncomfortable enough to a young man of Osborne’s age to feel himself continually hampered for want of a five-pound note. The principal supplies for the liberal — almost luxurious table at the Hall, came off the estate; so that there was no appearance of poverty as far as the household went; and as long as Osborne was content at home, he had everything he could wish for; but he had a wife elsewhere — he wanted to see her continually — and that necessitated journeys. She, poor thing! had to be supported: where was the money for the journeys and for Aimee’s modest wants to come from? That was the puzzle in Osborne’s mind just now. While he had been at college his allowance — heir of the Hamleys — had been three hundred, while Roger had to be content with a hundred less. The payment of these annual sums had given the squire a good deal of trouble; but he thought of it as a merely temporary inconvenience, perhaps unreasonably thought so. Osborne was to do great things; take high honours, get a fellowship, marry a long-descended heiress, live in some of the many uninhabited rooms at the Hall, and help the squire in the management of the estate that would some time be his. Roger was to be a clergyman; steady, slow Roger was just fitted for that, and when he declined entering the Church, preferring a life of more activity and adventure, Roger was to be- anything; he was useful and practical, and fit for all the employments from which Osborne was shut out by his fastidiousness, and his (pseudo) genius; so it was well he was an eldest son, for he would never have done to struggle through the world; and as for his settling down to a profession, it would be like cutting blocks with a razor! And now here was Osborne, living at home, but longing to be elsewhere; his allowance stopped in reality; indeed the punctual payment of it during the last year or two had been owing to his mother’s exertions; but nothing had been said about its present cessation by either father or son: money matters were too sore a subject between them. Every now and then the squire threw him a ten-pound note or so; but the sort of suppressed growl with which they were given, and the entire uncertainty as to when he might receive them, rendered any calculation based upon their receipt exceedingly vague and uncertain.

‘What in the world can I do to secure an income?’ thought Osborne, as he stood on the hearth-rug, his back to a blazing fire, his cup of coffee sent up in the rare old china that had belonged to the Hall for generations; his dress finished, as dress of Osborne’s could hardly fail to be. One could hardly have thought that this elegant young man, standing there in the midst of comfort that verged on luxury, should have been turning over that one great problem in his mind; but so it was. ‘What can I do to be sure of a present income? Things cannot go on as they are. I should need support for two or three years, even if I entered myself at the Temple, or Lincoln’s Inn.’ It would be impossible for live on my pay in the army; besides, I should hate that profession. In fact, there are evils attending all professions — I couldn’t bring myself to become a member of any I’ve ever heard of. Perhaps I’m more fitted to take orders than anything else, but to be compelled to write weekly sermons whether one had anything to say or not, and, probably, doomed only to associate with people below one in refinement and education! Yet poor Aimee must have money. I can’t bear to compare our dinners here, overloaded with joints and game and sweets, as Morgan will persist in sending them up, with Aimee’s two little mutton-chops. Yet what would my father say if he knew I’d married a Frenchwoman? In his present mood he’d disinherit me, if that is possible; and he’d speak about her in a way I couldn’t stand. A Roman Catholic, too! Well, I don’t repent it. I’d do it again. Only if my mother had been in good health, if she could have heard my story, and known Aimee! As it is, I must keep it secret; but where to get money? Where to get money?’

Then he bethought him of his poems — would they sell, and bring him in money? In spite of Milton, he thought they might; and he went to fetch his MSS. out of his room. He sate down near the fire, trying to study them with a critical eye, to represent public opinion as far as he could. He had changed his style since the Mrs. Hemans’ days. He was essentially imitative in his poetic faculty; and of late he had followed the lead of a popular writer of sonnets.’ He turned his poems over: they were almost equivalent to an autobiographical passage in his life. Arranging them in their order, they came as follows:—

‘To Aimee, Walking with a Little Child.’
‘To Aimee, Singing at her Work.’
‘To Aimee, turning away from me while I told my Love.’
‘Aimee’s Confession.’
‘Aimee in Despair.’
‘The Foreign Land in which my Aimee dwells.’
‘The Wedding Ring.’
‘The Wife.’

When he came to this last sonnet he put down his bundle of papers and began to think. ‘The wife.’ Yes, and a French wife, and a Roman Catholic wife — and a wife who might be said to have been in service! And his father’s hatred of the French, both collectively and individually — collectively, as tumultuous brutal ruffians, who murdered their king, and committed all kinds of bloody atrocities: individually, as represented by ‘Boney,’ and the various caricatures of ‘Johnny Crapaud’ that had been in full circulation about five-and-twenty years before this time — when the squire had been young and capable of receiving impressions. As for the form of religion in which Mrs. Osborne Hamley had been brought up, it is enough to say that Catholic emancipation had begun to be talked about by some politicians, and that the sullen roar of the majority of Englishmen, at the bare idea of it, was surging in the distance with ominous threatenings; the very mention of such a measure before the squire was, as Osborne well knew, like shaking a red flag before a bull.

And then he considered that if Aimee had had the unspeakable, the incomparable blessing of being born of English parents, in the very heart of England — Warwickshire, for instance — and had never heard of priests, or mass, or confession, or the Pope, or Guy Fawkes, but had been born, baptized, and bred in the Church of England, without having ever seen the outside of a dissenting meeting-house, or a papist chapel — even with all these advantages, her having been a (what was the equivalent for ‘bonne’ in English? ‘nursery governess’ was a term hardly invented) nursery-maid, with wages paid down once a quarter, liable to be dismissed at a month’s warning, and having her tea and sugar doled out to her, would be a shock to his father’s old ancestral pride that he would hardly ever get over.

‘If he saw her!’ thought Osborne. ‘If he could but see her!’ But if the squire were to see Aimee, he would also hear her speak her pretty broken English — precious to her husband, as it was in it that she had confessed brokenly with her English tongue, that she loved him soundly with her French heart — and Squire Hamley piqued himself on being a good hater of the French. ‘She would make such a loving, sweet, docile little daughter to my father — she would go as near as any one could towards filling up the blank void in this house, if he would but have her; but he won’t; he never would; and he shan’t have the opportunity of scouting her. Yet if I called her “Lucy” in these sonnets; and if they made a great effect — were praised in Blackwood and the Quarterly — and all the world was agog to find out the author; and I told him my secret — I could if I were successful — I think then he would ask who Lucy was, and I could tell him all then. If — how I hate “ifs.” “If me no ifs.” My life has been based on “whens;” and first they have turned to “ifs,” and then they have vanished away. It was “when Osborne gets honours,” and then “if Osborne,” and then a failure altogether. I said to Aimee, “When my mother sees you,” and now it is “If my father saw her,” with a very faint prospect of its ever coming to pass.’ So he let the evening hours flow on and disappear in reveries like these; winding up with a sudden determination to try the fate of his poems with a publisher, with the direct expectation of getting money for them, and an ulterior fancy that, if successful, they might work wonders with this father.

When Roger came home Osborne did not let a day pass before telling his brother of his plans. He never did conceal anything long from Roger; the feminine part of his character made him always desirous of a confidant, and as sweet sympathy as he could extract. But Roger’s opinion had no effect on Osborne’s actions; and Roger knew this full well. So when Osborne began with —‘I want your advice on a plan I have got in my head,’ Roger replied: ‘Some one told me that the Duke of Wellington’s maxim was never to give advice unless he could enforce its being carried into effect. Now I can’t do that; and you know, old boy, you don’t follow out my advice when you’ve got it.’

‘Not always, I know. Not when it does not agree with my own opinion. You are thinking about this concealment of my marriage, but you’re not up in all the circumstances. You know how fully I meant to have done it, if there had not been that row about my debts; and then my mother’s illness and ............