He nodded emphatically.
“Such is my honourable intention,” he said.
“I would never marry you in any circumstances,” she said. “Not even if I had met you under the happiest conditions. The question of your age”—she nearly added “and of your appearance,” but her natural kindness prevented that cruel thrust, though it would not have hurt him in the slightest degree—“has nothing whatever to do with my decision. I do not even like you, and have never liked you, Mr. Oberzohn.”
“Doctor,” he corrected, and in spite of her woeful plight she could have laughed at this insistence upon the ceremonial title.
“Young miss, I cannot woo you in the way of my dear and sainted brother, who was all for ladies and had a beautiful manner.”
She was amazed to hear that he had a brother at all—and it was almost a relief to know that he was dead.
“Martyred, at the hands of wicked and cunning murderers, slain in his prime by the assassin’s pistol . . .” His voice trembled and broke. “For that sainted life I will some day take vengeance.”
It was not wholly curiosity that impelled her to ask who killed him.
“Leon Gonsalez.” The words in his lips became the grating of a file. “Killed . . . murdered! And even his beautiful picture destroyed in that terrible fire. Had he saved that, my heart would have been soft towards him.” He checked himself, evidently realizing that he was getting away from the object of his call. “Think over this matter, young lady. Read the romantic books and the amorous books, and then perhaps you will not think it is so terrible a fate to drift at moonlight through the canals of Venice, with the moon above and the gondoliers.”
He wagged his head sentimentally.