"And Robin?"
He had returned to the old term.
"He didn't change his mind before. Miss Meredith did it for him. I am quite alive to the fact that if Miss Meredith hadn't interfered, and I hadn't come, he would now be engaged to Mabel."
Mr. Leighton appeared dumbfoundered.
"Do you care very much for him?" he asked.
"Oh, yes." Isobel looked almost helplessly at him. "He isn't the man I dreamed of, but he is mine, you know. It has come to that."
She sank on her knees beside him, her eyes blazing.
"Isn't it an indignity for me, as much as for Mabel, to take what she didn't want? You say she doesn't want him. At first--oh! I only desired to show my power. I always meant to marry a wealthier man. But it's no use. He is a waverer, don't I know it. I see him calculating whether I'm worth the racket. I see that--I! Isn't it deplorable! But I mean to make a man of him. He never has been one before. And I mean to marry him, Uncle."
Mr. Leighton smoked and smoked at his cigar. He was beginning at last to fathom the nature that took what it wanted--with both hands.
"Isobel," he said gently, "let us drop all this question of Mabel. It isn't that which comes upper-most, now. It's the question of what you lose by marrying in this way. Don't you know that this dropping of Miss Meredith, this way of 'paying her out,' you know, well, it may give you Robin intact; but have you an idea what you may lose in the process? I don't admire the girl, but--she is his sister. I have never known"--he threw away his cigar--"I have never yet known of a happy, a really happy marriage, where the happiness of two was built on the discomfiture of others. Won't you reconsider the whole position of being down on Miss Meredith, and paying everybody out who was concerned in Robin's affairs before you knew him? Won't you try to make your wedding a happiness to every one--even to Miss Meredith?"