"They are distantly related to a most excellent family of the same name in Philadelphia, I believe?"
"I have always understood that to be the truth."
"Ah, a very satisfactory connection indeed," said Stephen Maitland with no little satisfaction. "Proceed, sir."
"There is nothing much else to say about myself, except that I love your daughter and with your permission I want her for my wife."
Mr. Stephen Maitland had thought long and seriously over the state of affairs. He had proposed in his desperation to give Enid's hand to Armstrong if he found her. It had been impossible to keep secret the story of her adventure, her rescue and the death of Armstrong. It was natural and inevitable that gossip should have busied itself with her name. It would therefore have been somewhat difficult for Mr. Maitland to have withheld his consent to her marriage to almost any reputable man who had been thrown so intimately with her, but when the man was so unexceptionably born and bred as Newbold, what had appeared as a more or less disagreeable duty, almost an imperative imposition, became a pleasure!
Mr. Maitland was no bad judge of men when his prejudices were not rampant and he looked with much satisfaction on the fine, clean limbed, clear eyed, vigorous man who was at present suing for his daughter's hand. Newbold had shaved his beard and had cropped close his mustache, he was dressed in the habits of civilization and he was almost metamorphosed. His shyness wore away as he talked and his inherited ease of manner and his birthright of good breeding came back to him and sat easily upon him.
Under the circumstances the very best thing that could happen would be a marriage between the two; indeed, to be quite honest, Mr. Stephen Maitland would have felt that perhaps under any circumstances his daughter could do no better than commit herself to a man like this.
"I shall never attempt," he said at last, "to constrain my daughter. I think I have learned something by my touch with this life here, perhaps we of Philadelphia need a little broadening in airs more free. I am sure that she would never give her hand without her heart, and therefore, she must decide this matter herself. From her own lips you shall have your answer."
"But you, sir; I confess that I should feel easier and happier if I had your sanction and approval."
"Steve," said Mr. Robert Maitland, as the other hesitated, not because he intended to refuse but because he was loath to say the word that so far as he was concerned would give his daughter into another man's keeping, "I think you can trust Newbold. There are men here who knew him years ago; there is abundant evidence and testimony as to his qualities; I vouch for him."