“Why,” she asked, and could have bitten out her tongue because the word choked in her throat, “why should he give up coming?”
“This is absurd,” exclaimed Mr St. John. “Let us give over fencing and understand one another. My son is infatuated—he generally is, by the way, it is a failing of his,”—Jill felt this to be untrue even while he said it, but she made no sign. “You, of course, are quite aware of his infatuation? But, Miss Erskine, he is a beggar; he has nothing in the world save what I allow him.”
“How degrading!” cried Jill. “I should have credited him with possessing more manhood than that. Everyone should be independent who can be.”
He smiled and tapped the cheque-book with his fingers. He fancied that she would be sensible.
“It would not be wise to marry a pauper, would it?” he queried. “For a man who marries against his relative’s wishes when he looks to them for every penny, would be a pauper, without doubt.”
“No,” Jill answered with unnatural quietness, “it would not be wise. I don’t think anyone would contradict that.”
“You would not yourself, for instance?”
“Most certainly I should not.”
“Now we begin to understand one another,” he resumed almost cheerfully. He had greatly feared a scene; but she was so absolutely unemotional that he felt relieved.
“Personally, you will understand I should have no objection to you as a daughter-in-law at all, only I have made other arrangements for my son, arrangements so highly advantageous that it would be the height of folly to reject them as he proposes doing. He must marry his cousin, the young lady whose acquaintance, I learn, you have already made—”