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 Aimée! 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 Aimée, Walking with a Little Child.' 'To Aimée, Singing at her Work.' 'To Aimée, turning away from me while I told my Love.' 'Aimée's Confession.' 'Aimée in Despair.' 'The Foreign Land in which my Aimée 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 Aimée 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 Aimée, 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 Aimée, "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:
