“Less, if less be possible.”
“Mr. Cleremont, then?”
“Ah, yes, he might, and with a better chance of success; but—” She stopped, and though I waited patiently, she did not finish her sentence.
“But what?” asked I at last.
“Gaston hates doing a hazardous thing,” said she; and I remarked that her expression changed, and her face assumed a hard, stern look as she spoke. “His theory is, do nothing without three to one in your favor. He says you 'll always gets these odds, if you only wait.”
“But you don't believe that,” cried I, eagerly.
“Sometimes—very seldom, that is, I do not whenever I can help it.” There was a long pause now, in which neither of us spoke. At last she said, “I can't aid your mother in this project. She must give it up. There is no saying how your father would resent it.”
“And how will you tell her that?” faltered I out.
“I can't tell. I'll try and show her the mischief it might bring upon you; and that now, standing high, as you do, in your father's favor, she would never forgive herself, if she were the cause of a change towards you. This consideration will have more weight with her than any that could touch herself personally.”
“But it shall not,” cried I, passionately. “Nothing in my fortune shall stand between my mother and her love for me.”