I am sure I thought there was no harm in it, and your father always likes me to tell him what everybody says in his absence." Jemima went with a heavy heart into her father's presence. He was walking up and down the room, and did not see her at first. "O Jemima! is that you? Has your mother told you what I want to speak to you about?" "No!" said Jemima. "Not exactly." "She has been telling me what proves to me how very seriously you must have displeased and offended Mr. Farquhar, before he could have expressed himself to her as he did, when he left the house. You know what he said?" "No!" said Jemima, her heart swelling within her. "He has no right to say anything about me." She was desperate, or she durst not have said this before her father. "No right!--what do you mean, Jemima?" said Mr. Bradshaw, turning sharp round. "Surely you must know that I hope he may one day be your husband;that is to say, if you prove yourself worthy of the excellent training I have given you. I cannot suppose Mr. Farquhar would take any undisciplined girl as a wife." Jemima held tight by a chair near which she was standing. She did not speak;her father was pleased by her silence--it was the way in which he liked his projects to be received. "But you cannot suppose," he continued, "that Mr. Farquhar will consent to marry you----" "Consent to marry me!" repeated Jemima, in a low tone of brooding indignation;were those the terms upon which her rich woman's heart was to be given, with a calm consent of acquiescent acceptance, but a little above resignation on the part of the receiver? --"if you give way to a temper which, although you have never dared to show it to me, I am well aware exists, although I hoped the habits of self-examination I had instilled had done much to cure you of manifesting it. At one time, Richard promised to be the more headstrong of the two; now, I must desire you to take pattern by him. Yes," he continued, falling into his old train of thought, "it would be a most fortunate connection for you in every way.
I should have you under my own eye, and could still assist you in the formation of your character, and I should be at hand to strengthen and confirm your principles. Mr. Farquhar's connection with the firm would be convenient and agreeable to me in a pecuniary point of view. He----" Mr. Bradshaw was going on in his enumeration of the advantages which he in particular, and Jemima in the second place, would derive from this marriage, when his daughter spoke, at first so low that he could not hear her, as he walked up and down the room with his creaking boots, and he had to stop to listen. "Has Mr. Farquhar ever spoken to you about it?" Jemima's cheek was flushed as she asked the question; she wished that she might have been the person to whom he had first addressed himself. Mr. Bradshaw answered-- "No, not spoken. It has been implied between us for some time. At least, I have been so aware of his intentions that I have made several allusions, in the course of business, to it, as a thing that might take place. He can hardly have misunderstood; he must have seen that I perceived his design, and approved of it," said Mr. Bradshaw, rather doubtfully; as he remembered how very little, in fact, passed between him and his partner which could have reference to the subject, to any but a mind prepared to receive it.
