"No, don't put it that way," he interrupted quickly. "Your father was very honorable."
"I do not know much about marriage, but it seems as if——"
"As if youth and love should go hand in hand? Middle age and money may make a dicker. But if there were love, or if the title won you in any degree," and he knew there were some who would have been won even by poverty and a title with the background of the Grange.
"I do not love you," she said simply. "It seems ungrateful when you have been both kind and patient. Indeed, I have been trying——" There was such a wistful cadence to her tremulous voice that it touched him, man of the world as he was. The slow tears dropped from her lashes, but she could not raise her eyes, though there was entreaty in every line of her slight figure, even in the limp hands that hung by her side.
"And a love that is forced is no love at all. But you must realize the sacrifice you will make, and consider. It will be more than giving up a title. Everything is in your mother's hands——"
"Oh, I have told her that I do not care for the money. I remembered so little of papa that he seemed an utter stranger to me, and—some one had loved and adopted me before. She knows I wish to go back home——"
Her voice faltered and broke.
"You are a brave little girl," he exclaimed admiringly. "An honest and true one, and you deserve to be happy, to love some one who has love and youth to give in return." Did she know such a one? "I think you are not taking root here."
"You know mamma is not any real relation," she began as if in apology. "She has been very kind and indulgent to me. I would like to please her. But, oh, I would so much rather have been left in San Francisco. My dear uncle would not have gone away. We should have been poor, for he had just lost everything in a dreadful fire, but I wouldn't have minded——"
"My dear child, you shall not be sacrificed." He wanted to take the drooping figure in his arms, and kiss away the tears that rolled silently over the softly rounded cheeks. She looked so fragile in her black frock. If she could be his little sister! But he had nothing to dower her with, he would even lose the Grange himself. But he said, "Do not give yourself any further uneasiness, I will see Mrs. Westbury."