“Odalite!” she gasped, under her breath.
“Yes, if you please. I hear that the girl is considered marriageable. I hear also a rumor to the effect that she may possibly be married to that young midshipman who is expected home at Christmas—unless I supplant him, which I hope to do, for she cannot care for him really, you know, since they parted when they were boy and child.”
“But she does care for him. She loves him as he loves her. They have always been devoted to each other,” indignantly retorted Elfrida Force.
The colonel laughed insolently.
“Boy and girl love! Puppy love! Pigeon love! We will soon change all that.”
“If she did not care at all for Leonidas Force, still I know it is utterly impossible she should ever care for you.”
“I would make her love me—or pretend to do so.”
“Even if she were to become so deranged in mind, so demoralized in heart as to love you, I should never consent to such a monstrous marriage!” passionately declared Elfrida Force.
“Oh, yes you would! You will, when you realize that unless you do, your family peace and honor, your social position and prosperity—all you prize and pride yourself upon—must suddenly fall and bury you and yours under their ruins. Are you prepared to meet such a catastrophe? Indeed, to pull down destruction upon yourself, your husband, your daughters—all whom you love and cherish? Are you prepared to see your name blazoned all over the world as the subject of an unexampled scandal in high life? Are you prepared to see your husband and daughters—die of——Who can foresee their fate? Are you willing that this discovery should wreck and destroy your home and your family, root and branch, and leave nothing of you but the memory of one dishonored name behind? Are you ready to incur all this irremediable woe and ruin? For be sure that in refusing me your daughter’s hand, you do incur it.”
“Do you think, reckless knave as you are! do you think, even if I were so lost to every sense of honor and decency as to wish to sacrifice my dear daughter, that she would ever be persuaded to become your wife?” said the lady, and her voice sounded hollow from the depths of her distress.