"Why did I bring you here to-night?" asked Storri at last.
"Northern Consolidated, I suppose," said Mr. Harley, looking up.
Storri laughed, and a white flash of his teeth showed in a tigerish way.
"Come!" cried Storri, smiting his hands in a kind of rapture of cruelty; "I will not, what you call it, beat about the bush. It is not Credit Magellan; it is not Northern Consolidated; no, it is not business at all. What! shall Storri be forever at some grind of business? Shall he never pause for love? My Czar would tell you another tale. Listen, my friend. I have done you the honor—I, Storri, a Russian nobleman, have done you the honor to adore your daughter."
Mr. Harley gaped and stared; he could not have been more impressed had the statue of Liberty which topped the Capitol dome stepped down for a stroll in the Capitol grounds. And yet he was not shocked; if Dorothy had decided on Storri for her husband, well and good; he was too indulgent a father to quarrel with her.
"I have spoken to Mrs. Hanway-Harley of my passion," continued Storri, still pacing to and fro. "She is so charming as to encourage it."
"Why, then," broke in Mr. Harley, in evident relief, "you have gone the right way about the matter. If my wife favors you, assuredly you may count upon my consent."
"Bah!" returned Storri, snapping his fingers. "Mrs. Hanway-Harley consents; you consent; I am flattered! The fastidious Miss Dorothy, however, refuses my love—puts it aside! Storri is not the man! On my soul! Storri is declined by a little American who draws her blood from peasants!" and Storri threw his hands palm upward, expressing self-contempt in view of the insult thus put upon him.
"Does my daughter decline your love?"
"It is not that." Storri could not for his vanity's sake, even after he himself had used them, accept those terms. "Her heart has—what shall we say?—a tenant. Your daughter has gone among her own kind with her love. It is that fellow Storms—it is he whom your daughter's taste prefers."