"I'm sure you would learn to love him, Beryl."
She shook her head. "Impossible. I'm sorry, father, especially if you wished me to marry him. But it is impossible."
The doctor stared gloomily into the fire. "You must do as you wish. I cannot conscientiously urge you to make any sacrifice—he is a rough sort, and I'm afraid he will take your refusal badly. I don't mind what he does—really. I've made a hash of things—it was madness ever to invest a penny. I had a hundred and fifty thousand when I came into this house. And now—!"
She listened with a cold feeling in her heart. "Do you mean—that you depend upon the good will of Mr. Steppe—that if you were to break your connection with him and his companies, your position would be affected—?"
He nodded. "I am afraid that is how matters stand," he said, "but I forbid you to take that into consideration." Yet he looked at her so eagerly, so wistfully, that she knew his lofty statements to be so many words by which he expressed principles, long since dead. The form of his vanished code showed dimly through the emptiness of his speech.
"I am a modern father—I believe that a girl's heart should go where it will. Girls do not marry men to save their families, except in melodrama, and fathers do not ask such a ghastly sacrifice. I should have been glad if you had thought kindly of Steppe. It would have made my course so much more smooth. However—" He got up, stooped to poke the fire again, hung the poker tidily on the iron and straightened himself.
"Let me think it over," she said, not looking at him. Not until he was out of the room did he feel uncomfortable.
She had been prepared for this development. Steppe had been a constant visitor to the house and his rare flowers filled the vases of every room except hers. And her father had hinted and hinted. That Dr. Merville was heavily in the debt of her suitor she could guess. Steppe had told her months before that he had to come to the rescue of the doctor. Only she had hoped that so crude an alternative would not be placed before her, though she knew that such arrangements were not altogether confined to the realms of melodrama. At least two friends of hers had married for a similar reason. A knightly millionaire bootmaker had married Lady Sylvia Frascommon and had settled the Earl of Farileigh's bills at a moment when that noble earl was dodging writs in bankruptcy. She could look at the matter more calmly because she had come to a dead end. There was nothing ahead, nothing. She did not count Ambrose Sault's love amongst the tangibilities of life. That belonged to herself. Steppe would marry that possession. It was as much of her, as hands and lips, except that it was beyond his enjoyment. In the midst of her examination, her father came in.
"There is one thing I forgot to say, dear—Ronnie, who is as fond of you as any of us, thinks that you ought to marry—he says he'll be glad to see you married to Steppe. I thought it was fine of Ronnie."
"Shut the door, father, please; there's a draught," said Beryl.