"
"And what of his love for her?"
"Good heavens! you don't suppose Micky cares for that old thing he has
married! _That_ was what I was trying to save him from. He'd have had to be
the deuce of a lot worse than he is to deserve that."
Had it occurred to him, I put it to Cecil Harshaw, to ask himself what the
saving of his precious cousin might have cost the girl who was to have been
offered up to that end?
"You leave out one small feature of the case," said Harshaw, with a sick
and burning look that made me drop my eyes, old woman as I am. "I love her
myself so well that, by Heaven! if she had wanted Micky or any other man,
she should have had him, if that was what her heart was set upon. But I
didn't believe it was. I wanted her to know the truth, and, hang it! I
couldn't write it to her. I couldn't peach on Micky; but I wanted to smash
things. I wanted something to happen. Maybe I didn't do the right thing,
but I had to do something."
I couldn't tell him just what I thought of him at that moment, but I did
say to him that he had some very simple ideas for an end-of-the-century
young Englishman. At which he smiled sweetly, and said it was one of his
simple ideas that Kitty need not be informed who or what her successor was,
or how promptly she had been succeeded.
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