"Your father was guided by experience, my boy. He made a miserable marriage himself, and did not want you or Wilfred to go and do likewise. He had evidently confidence in my judgment, and knew that I would stand between you and folly."
"Confound your impudence," shouted Harold, his dark face crimson with anger. "You're only fifteen years older than I am. At the age of thirty I am surely capable of selecting my own wife!"
"I hardly think so, when you select Miss Scarse!"
"What the deuce have you against her?"
"Nothing, personally. She is a nice girl, a very nice girl, but poor. A man of your extravagant tastes should marry money. Brenda is well enough, for herself," continued Malet, with odious familiarity, for which Harold could have struck him, "but her father!--Stuart Scarse is a Little Englander!"
Captain Burton was taken aback at the irrelevancy of this remark. "What the devil has that to do with her or me?" he demanded bluntly.
"Everything, if you love your country. You belong to a Conservative family. You are a soldier, and the time is coming when we must all rally round the flag and preserve the Empire. Scarse is a member of that pernicious band which desires the dismemberment of our glorious----
"Oh, I'm sick of this!" Harold jumped up and crammed on his cap. "Your political ideas have nothing to do with my marriage. You have no reason to object to Miss Scarse. Once for all, will you pay me this money?"
"No, I will not. I shall not agree to your marrying the daughter of a Little Englander."
"Then I shall throw the estate into Chancery."