“Rick,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “I am glad to have won your confidence. I hope to preserve it. When I contemplated these relations between us four which have so brightened my life and so invested it with new interests and pleasures, I certainly did contemplate, afar off, the possibility of you and your pretty cousin here (don’t be shy, Ada, don’t be shy, my dear!) being in a mind to go through life together. I saw, and do see, many reasons to make it desirable. But that was afar off, Rick, afar off!”
“We look afar off, sir,” returned Richard.
“Well!” said Mr. Jarndyce. “That’s rational. Now, hear me, my dears! I might tell you that you don’t know your own minds yet, that a thousand things may happen to divert you from one another, that it is well this chain of flowers you have taken up is very easily broken, or it might become a chain of lead. But I will not do that. Such wisdom will come soon enough, I dare say, if it is to come at all. I will assume that a few years hence you will be in your hearts to one another what you are today. All I say before speaking to you according to that assumption is, if you do change—if you do come to find that you are more commonplace cousins to each other as man and woman than you were as boy and girl (your manhood will excuse me, Rick!)—don’t be ashamed still to confide in me, for there will be nothing monstrous or uncommon in it. I am only your friend and distant kinsman. I have no power over you whatever. But I wish and hope to retain your confidence if I do nothing to forfeit it.”
“I am very sure, sir,” returned Richard, “that I speak for Ada too when I say that you have the strongest power over us both—rooted in respect, gratitude, and affection—strengthening every day.”
“Dear cousin John,” said Ada, on his shoulder, “my father’s place can never be empty again. All the love and duty I could ever have rendered to him is transferred to you.”
“Come!” said Mr. Jarndyce. “Now for our assumption. Now we lift our eyes up and look hopefully at the distance! Rick, the world is before you;