"You don't mean——" Mary Sorel broke down in the midst of her sentence.
"I do. He said if I would marry Œnone, and 'make his daughter a countess' (real old melodrama stuff!) he'd settle a million pounds on me, on our wedding-day. Also, I'd inherit Œnone's private fortune. Darling Marise, dear Mrs. Sorel, if you knew all the money troubles I've had, and have still, you'd forgive me if I told you this was a temptation."
"But you didn't yield?" Mary prompted.
"No-o. Because Marise was sailing for the States, and I couldn't let her come over here without me, to be gobbled up by some beastly American millionaire. I had to be with her. I had to!"
"That is real love," cried Mary. "I'm proud of you."
"I'm not proud of myself," he mumbled. "I got that bally mission. I persuaded Uncle Con to believe—at least I hope he more or less believed!—that it was thrust on me, instead of my doing all I knew to bag it. I told him I'd decide directly I returned to England—which would be soon. But it hasn't been soon. He's a man who gets inside information about official things. He knows the mission is finished, and I could go home any day I liked. Presently, if I'm not jolly careful, he'll find out why I don't like. Then my goose will be cooked. Marise—Mrs. Sorel—I simply can't afford to have that happen."
"What do you propose to do?" Mary challenged him, dry-lipped.
The black eyes blazed despair. "What can I do?"
"Tony," said Marise softly, "I've got 'normous lots of money saved up; 'most two hundred thousand dollars. You don't need to grovel in the dust to any old Greek banker, if he is your uncle. So there!"
"My poor, sweet baby," groaned Severance. "What's two hundred thousand dollars? Fifty thousand pounds, isn't it? That's pin money for you and your mother; and you go on making more while you stay on the stage, as a spider winds silvery thread out of itself. But for me it's not nearly enough, as things are now. It wouldn't save the situation. I've come into more than that amount with the estates. It's a drop in the bucket, I find. The fellows behind me in the succession resigned themselves to poverty. I can't, for the best of reasons. I'm in a beastly moneylender's hands. I began by owing him ten thousand pounds. It's more like eighty thousand to-day. Now, maybe, you see where we stand."