“I ventured to interrupt your labors,” said d’Antri, his face reflecting a gentle look of pain at his host’s brusqueness, “to speak to you in reference to your daughter’s dot.”
“Her which?” queried Caleb, looking at the bride as though in search of symptoms of some violent, unsuspected malady.
“Amadeo means my dowry,” explained Blanche, with some impatience. “It is the custom, you know, on the Continent.”
“Not on any part of the Continent I ever struck. And I’ve been pretty much all over it from ’Frisco to Quebec. It’s a new one on me.”
“In Europe,” said Blanche, tapping her foot, and gazing apologetically at her handsome husband, “it is customary—as I thought everybody knew—for girls to bring their husbands a marriage portion. How much are you going to settle on me?”
“How much what? Money? You’ve always had your $25,000 a year allowance, and I’ve never kicked when you overdrew it. But now you’re married, I suppose your husband——”
“But, Mr. Conover,” broke in the prince, with more eagerness than Caleb had ever before seen on his placid exterior, “I think you fail to understand. I—we——”
“What are you driving at?” snapped Conover. “Do you mean you can’t support your wife?”
“Papa!” cried Blanche, in distress, “for once in your life try not to be coarse. It isn’t a question of support. It is the custom——”
“For a father to pay a man to marry his girl? I can’t see it myself, though now you speak about it, I seem to have read or heard something of the sort. Well, if it’s a custom, I suppose it goes. How much?”