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She used to put on cheerfulness for his sake, even when she felt it least. One day, however, he found her less bright than usual, and she showed him an advertisement Bollinghope house and park for sale; and she was not old enough nor wise enough to disguise from him that this pained her. Some expressions of regret and pity fell from her; that annoyed Henry, and he said, "What is that to us?"
This resolution, not to marry for two years, is it your own idea? or has somebody put it into your head since we stood on Cairnhope, and looked at Bollinghope?" "Please give me credit for it," said Grace, turning very red: "it is the only sensible one I have had for a long time." Mr. Coventry groaned aloud, and turned very pale.
If you sing before breakfast, you'll cry before supper." At breakfast, Mr. Coventry invited Miss Carden to go to the top of Cairnhope Peak, and look over four counties. He also told her she could see Bollinghope house, his own place, very well from the Peak. Grace assented: and, immediately after breakfast, begged Jael to be in the way to accompany her.
"I promise you absolute secrecy, sir, as far as you are concerned. As to your other condition, the matter will work thus: if your communication should be as important as you think, I can do nothing the man is not in the saw-trade I shall carry the information to two other secretaries, and shall not tell them I had it from Mr. Coventry, of Bollinghope."
She divined, with feminine quickness, that Mr. Coventry would be very apt, if he pointed out Bollinghope House to her from the top of a mountain, to say, "Will you be its mistress?" but, possibly, she did not wish to be hurried, or it may have been only a mere instinct, an irrational impulse of self-defense, with which the judgment had nothing to do; or perhaps it was simple modesty.
I will never let you make an imprudent match; but I won't force you into a good one." "And you know I shall never marry without your consent, papa. But I'm only nineteen, and I don't want to be driven away to Bollinghope." "And I'm sure I don't want to drive you away anywhere. Mine will be a dull, miserable home without you. Only please tell me what to say to him." "Oh, I leave that to you.
"That is Bollinghope." She looked at it with polite interest. "Do you like it?" "Very much. It warms the landscape so." He expected a more prosaic answer; but he took her cue. "I wish it was a great deal prettier than it is, and its owner a much better man; richer wiser " "You are hard to please, Mr. Coventry." "Miss Carden Grace may I call you Grace?" "It seems to me you have done it."
"Oh, come!" "Let me explain: all women, worthy of the name, are cowards; and cowardice drives them to deceit, even against their will. Pray bear me to an end. On the fifth of last December, I took Miss Carden to the top of Cairnhope hill. I showed her Bollinghope in the valley, and asked her to be its mistress." "And what did she say? Yes, or no?"
Bollinghope house and park were actually sold that very week; they were purchased, at more than their value, by a wealthy manufacturer: and the proceeds of this sale and the timber cleared off all Coventry's mortgages, and left him with a few hundred pounds in cash, and an estate which had not a tree on it, but also had not a debt upon it.
He seized this opportunity to carry out a coup he had long meditated: he went round to a dozen timber-merchants, and contracted with them for the sale of every tree, old or young, on his estate; and, while the trees were falling like grain, and the agents on both sides measuring the fallen, he vanished entirely from Hillsborough and Bollinghope. Dr.
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