"I hope you won't think I'm making light of your father's illness," he
said, earnestly. "But it seems to me--I must say it--it seems to me that
the poor girl has the first claim on you."
Geoffrey looked at him in surly amazement.
"The first claim on me? Do you think I'm going to risk being cut out of
my father's will? Not for the best woman that ever put on a petticoat!"
Arnold's admiration of his friend was the solidly-founded admiration
of many years; admiration for a man who could row, box, wrestle,
jump--above all, who could swim--as few other men could perform those
exercises in contemporary England. But that answer shook his faith. Only
for the moment--unhappily for Arnold, only for the moment.
"You know best," he returned, a little coldly. "What can I do?"
Geoffrey took his arm--roughly as he took every thing; but in a
companionable and confidential way.
"Go, like a good fellow, and tell her what has happened. We'll start
from here as if we were both going to the railway; and I'll drop you at
the foot-path, in the gig. You can get on to your own place afterward by
the evening train. It puts you to no inconvenience, and it's doing the
kind thing by an old friend.
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