`I assure you she is, my lord,' returned Mrs Nickleby. `When she was at school in Devonshire, she was universally allowed to be beyond all exception the very cleverest girl there, and there were a great many very clever ones too, and that's the truth -- twenty-five young ladies, fifty guineas a year without the et-ceteras, both the Miss Dowdles the most accomplished, elegant, fascinating creatures -- Oh dear me!' said Mrs Nickleby, `I never shall forget what pleasure she used to give me and her poor dear papa, when she was at that school, never -- such a delightful letter every half-year, telling us that she was the first pupil in the whole establishment, and had made more progress than anybody else! I can scarcely bear to think of it even now. The girls wrote all the letters themselves,' added Mrs Nickleby, `and the writing-master touched them up afterwards with a magnifying glass and a silver pen; at least I think they wrote them, though Kate was never quite certain about that, because she didn't know the handwriting of hers again; but anyway, I know it was a circular which they all copied, and of course it was a very gratifying thing -- very gratifying.'
With similar recollections Mrs Nickleby beguiled the tediousness of the way, until they reached the omnibus, which the extreme politeness of her new friends would not allow them to leave until it actually started, when they took their hats, as Mrs Nickleby solemnly assured her hearers on many subsequent occasions, `completely off,' and kissed their straw-coloured kid gloves till they were no longer visible.
Mrs Nickleby leant back in the furthest corner of the conveyance, and, closing her eyes, resigned herself to a host of most pleasing meditations.
Kate had never said a word about having met either of these gentlemen;`that,' she thought, `argues that she is strongly prepossessed in favour of one of them.' Then the question arose, which one could it be. The lord was the youngest, and his title was certainly the grandest; still Kate was not the girl to be swayed by such considerations as these. `I will never put any constraint upon her inclinations,' said Mrs Nickleby to herself;`but upon my word I think there's no comparison between his lordship and Sir Mulberry -- Sir Mulberry is such an attentive gentlemanly creature, so much manner, such a fine man, and has so much to say for himself. Ihope it's Sir Mulberry -- I think it must be Sir Mulberry!' And then her thoughts flew back to her old predictions, and the number of times she had said, that Kate with no fortune would marry better than other people's daughters with thousands; and, as she pictured with the brightness of a mother's fancy all the beauty and grace of the poor girl who had struggled so cheerfully with her new life of hardship and trial, her heart grew too full, and the tears trickled down her face.
Meanwhile, Ralph walked to and fro in his little back-office, troubled in mind by what had just occurred. To say that Ralph loved or cared for -- in the most ordinary acceptation of those terms -- any one of God's creatures, would be the wildest fiction. Still, there had somehow stolen upon him from time to time a thought of his niece which was tinged with compassion and pity; breaking through the dull cloud of dislike or indifference which darkened men and women in his eyes, there was, in her case, the faintest gleam of light -- a most feeble and sickly ray at the best of times --but there it was, and it showed the poor girl in a better and purer aspect than any in which he had looked on human nature yet.
`I wish,' thought Ralph, `I had never done this. And yet it will keep this boy to me, while there is money to be made. Selling a girl -- throwing her in the way of temptation, and insult, and coarse speech. Nearly two thousand pounds profit from him already though. Pshaw! match-making mothers do the same thing every day.'
He sat down, and told the chances, for and against, on his fingers.
`If I had not put them in the right track today,' thought Ralph, `this foolish woman would have done so. Well. If her daughter is as true to herself as she should be from what I have seen, what harm ensues? A little teasing, a little humbling, a few tears. Yes,' said Ralph, aloud, as he locked his iron safe. `She must take her chance. She must take her chance.'