“What!” cried Garwood, “you don’t mean to tell me you’re engaged?”
“I suppose we are—in a way.”
“This must stop,” said Garwood. “I thought you had more sense. You can’t marry him. He is a nobody; he is on the verge of bankruptcy; he is merely after my money.”
She cast a sidewise glance at a long mirror and laughed at the lovely reflection. “You are not complimentary, papa. Don’t you think a young man might fall in love with me for myself?”
“I am not talking of love, but of marriage,” said Garwood cynically. “I won’t have it, I tell you. You must drop Kent now.”
“Why?”
“Because I say so,” said her father, his mouth setting firmly. “I won’t mince matters with you, Edith. Inside a year Kent will be looking for a clerk’s job. You’re not cut out for a poor man’s wife.”
“You mean that if I married him you would give me nothing?”
“You grasp my meaning exactly. Not a cent during my life nor after my death.”
Edith Garwood sighed as plaintively as she could; but it was in fact a sigh of relief. It was put up to her so squarely that she had no choice, as she looked at it. She was already tired of Kent, anxious for an excuse to break with him, and she had secretly dreaded the affair coming to her father’s knowledge. Now the worst was over. And she saw an opportunity of avoiding a scene with Joe, which she had dreaded also.