The physician answered gravely:
“I should have had to ask you to choose between him and me.”
The clash of these two strong wills had come at last, and both were silent for a time.
Vanbrugh was the first to resume.
“Every objection I had against the Duke of Trent, of course, applies with ten-fold force to his brother. The Duke is physically sound; he has personally escaped the taint of his family stock, and it is possible that it may disappear in his descendants. But Lord Alistair has inherited his father’s vices. He is an idler, a profligate, and I might say a drunkard.”
“He has ceased to drink,” Hero protested. “I do not believe the life he has been leading is his natural one. I am sure that if he were to marry a woman who understood him he would become a changed man.”
“I do not believe in changed men,” her father answered. “But that is not the point. I am not condemning Lord Alistair for the life he has led up to the present. On the contrary, from my point of view of an enlightened sociology, the sooner such a man exhausts his vital energy the better.”
“You would have him commit suicide!” Hero exclaimed, with flashing eyes.
“I would have him commit suicide rather than marry, yes,” the scientist responded firmly.
“I have promised to marry him.” Hero said the words with a calmness which alarmed her father.