was it to be regretted if he did? The letter was a plea for my own
interests, barely veiled.

At the moment of writing it, and moreover when I treated my father with
especial coldness, my heart was far less warm in the contemplation of its
pre-eminent aim than when I was suffering him to endanger it, almost
without a protest. Janet and a peaceful Riversley, and a life of quiet
English distinction, beckoned to me visibly, and not hatefully. The
image of Ottilia conjured up pictures of a sea of shipwrecks, a scene of
immeasurable hopelessness. Still, I strove toward that. My strivings
were against my leanings, and imagining the latter, which involved no
sacrifice of the finer sense of honour, to be in the direction of my
lower nature, I repelled them to preserve a lofty aim that led me through
questionable ways.

'Can it be you, Harry,' my aunt Dorothy's reply ran (I had anticipated
her line of reasoning, though not her warmth), 'who advise him to this
marriage from a motive so inexplicably unworthy? That you will repay her
the money, I do not require your promise to assure me. The money is
nothing. It is the prospect of her life and fortune which you are
consenting, if not urging him, to imperil for your own purposes. Are you
really prepared to imitate in him, with less excuse for doing it, the
things you most condemn? Let it be checked at the outset. It cannot be.
A marriage of inclination on both sides, prudent in a worldly sense, we
might wish for him, perhaps, if he could feel quite sure of himself. His
wife might persuade him not to proceed in his law-case. There I have
long seen his ruin. He builds such expectations on it! You speak of
something worse than a mercenary marriage. I see this in your
handwriting!--your approval of it! I have to check the whisper that
tells me it reads like a conspiracy. Is she not a simpleton? Can you