“What! The young lady with a soul above nature?” interrupted Jill, thoroughly astonished, and for the first time off her guard. “Oh, he’ll never marry her.”
“Indeed he will; there is nothing else for him to do. You forget that I can cut him off without a shilling, and will do so if he does not conform to my wishes.”
“Yes,” Jill acquiesced as though she were discussing something entirely disconnected with herself, “Of course, I had forgotten that.”
“The long and the short of the matter is this, Miss Erskine, if you insist upon encouraging my son in his mad infatuation you ruin his prospects and do yourself no good; for I believe that you agreed that you would not marry a pauper?”
“No,” she answered, staring stonily out of the window with a gaze which saw nothing. “I would not marry a pauper; I don’t think it would be wise, and I don’t think it would be right to do so.”
“A very sensible decision,” returned Mr St. John, senior, approvingly. “You have taken a great weight off my mind, my dear young lady; and I am greatly indebted to you. How greatly you alone are in a position to say,” and he tapped the cheque-book again with reassuring delicacy, but Jill did not notice the action and for once failed to follow the drift of his speech. A dull, heavy, aching despair had fallen upon her which she could not shake off. She seemed hardly to be listening to him now and only imperfectly comprehended his meaning.
“I am to understand then,” Mr St. John resumed, straightening himself, and looking about him with an urbane benevolence that was most irritating, “that you will work in conjunction with us? Disillusion him a little, and—”
“Oh, stop!” cried Jill, with the first real display of feeling that she had shown throughout the interview. “I cannot bear it. Do you think that because I have adopted art as a profession that I have turned into a lay figure and have no heart at all? You have robbed existence of its only pleasure so far as I am concerned. Can you not spare me the rest? I won’t impoverish him by marrying him but I am glad that he loves me, and I won’t try to lessen his love—I can’t do that.”
He regarded her with angry impatience, frowning heavily the while. It was a try on—a diplomatic ruse, he considered; he had wondered rather at her former impassiveness; but apparently she was not very quickwitted and had been unprepared.
“My dear Miss—Erskine,” he exclaimed, endeavouring to adapt himself to the new mood with but little success however, “you are too sensible altogether to indulge in heroics. I don’t wish to appear harsh, and I am quite certain that you have your feelings like anyone else, but there are Miss Bolton’s feelings also to be taken into consideration, and, though I greatly regret having myself to announce his dishonourable behaviour, she has been engaged to my son for some months past.”