“I shall, I shall,” I said, feebly, trying to make him see how unfit I was for such a discussion. “Let them marry. Everything shall be looked after. Only leave me in peace. Do not disturb me with these mercenary——”
That word must have angered him, for his face whitened, and he said, with suppressed fury: “It is perfectly well known, Mr. Galloway, that you made no provision whatever for your other children, and that you keep your son on a beggarly allowance, considering your fortune and the social station which you are struggling to maintain. You have given your elder daughter nothing. I speak plainly, sir, because your dealings with your children and with Mr. Bradish’s daughter are matters of common gossip. I will permit no evasion, no screening behind illness. I must speak the only language you understand. It is a matter of indifference to us——”
“I had no idea the Kuypers were so—so thrifty,” said I, myself in a fury at this vulgar and insulting tirade.
“As I was saying,” he went on, “it is a matter of indifference to us whether my son marries your daughter or not. His mother and I consented only after he had made it plain to us that his happiness was involved. My consent was conditioned on your acting the part of an honourable and considerate father.”
“Our conceptions of a parent are evidently as wide apart as our conceptions of the feeling a young man should entertain toward a young woman he purposes to marry,” said I. “Your demand for five millions is preposterous. The honour of marrying my daughter should be—shall be—sufficient for your son—if I permit the marriage to go on.”
“Very well, sir. You may keep your daughter and your ill-got millions.”
“Strange that ill-got wealth should have such a fascination for you!”
“Everything is purified by passing to innocent hands,” he replied. “But—enough! I am ashamed that my temper should have degraded me to such a controversy with such a man. The longer we have had this matter under advisement the more nauseating it has become. I might have known that nothing but humiliation would result from even considering an alliance with a family whose head is notorious throughout the length and breadth of this land for chicanery, for impudent dishonesty, for theft——”
I heard no more. I was now dimly conscious that his purpose throughout had been, after a perfunctory attempt to arrange a settlement, to provoke a quarrel that would make the marriage impossible. At his last words I felt a pain shoot from my brain throughout my body—a pain so frightful that I straightway lost consciousness.
At last my stealthy, shuffling, creeping enemy had stolen up behind me and had struck me down.