“When a man insists so positively on his right to make a settlement, it is no unfair presumption to infer that he means to marry.”
“The supposition might certainly be entertained,” said the old envoy, bowing with the courtesy he would have observed in a ministerial conference.
“For that”—and the banker laid a most marked and peculiar emphasis on the word—“for that, most assuredly, I was not prepared.”
“Nor can I say,” continued the other, “that I deemed it any part of my duty to submit such a possibility to your consideration.”
“Perhaps not, Sir Within; there was no absolute reason why you should. You are, of course, the only judge of what concerns your own interests, or—or——”
“Or happiness?”
“I didn’t say happiness, simply because I thought it was the very consideration that you were about to omit.”
Sir Within smiled very blandly; he arranged the frill of his shirt—he wore a frilled shirt—and, taking forth a splendidly jewelled box, he offered a pinch to his companion. It was the diplomatic mode of saying that a conference was closed; but Mr. Ladarelle did not understand this nicety.
“After all, Sir Within, neither you nor I are men who can affect to defy the world. What the world thinks and says of us, we cannot undervalue.”
“The world, at my age, is the six, perhaps eight, people I could get to dine with me.”