When he told her that
she might go at once if she chose, she remembered, with a pang of agony,
that she had already overdrawn her account at the bankers. She was the
actual possessor of an income of four thousand pounds a year, and now, in
her terrible strait, she could not stir because she had no money with
which to travel. Had all things been well with her, she could, no doubt,
have gone to her bankers and have arranged this little difficulty. But as
it was she could not move, because her purse was empty.
Lord George sat looking at her and thinking whether he would make the
plunge and ask her to be his wife, with all her impediments and drawbacks
about her. He had been careful to reduce her to such a condition of
despair that she would undoubtedly have accepted him so that she might
have some one to lean upon in her trouble; but as he looked at her he
doubted. She was such a mass of deceit that he was afraid of her. She
might say that she would marry him, and then, when the storm was over,
refuse to keep her word. She might be in debt almost to any amount. She
might be already married for anything that he knew. He did know that she
was subject to all manner of penalties for what she had done.
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