“I saw them together just after they left you this morning,” said she. “I was at one of the windows of the Castle, they were far along the terrace; but I’m sure that he said something to her about her eyes.”
“I should not be surprised if he did,” said Edmund. “Her eyes invite comment.”
“I believe that in spite of her eyes she is much the same as any other girl.”
“Is that to the point?” he asked. He was a trifle disappointed in her last sentence. It seemed to show him that, whatever Beatrice might be, Helen was much the same as other girls.
“It is very much to the point,” said she. “If she is like other girls she will hesitate before marrying a penniless man.”
“I agree with you,” said he. “But if she is like other girls she will not hesitate to love a penniless man.”
“Possibly—if, like me, she can afford to do so. But I happen to know that she cannot afford it. This brings me up to what has been on my mind all day. You are, I know, my friend; you are Harold Wynne’s also. Now, if you want to enable him to gratify his reasonable ambition—if you want to make him happy—to make me happy—you will prevent him from ever asking Beatrice Avon to marry him.”
“And I am prepared to do so much for him—for you—for her. But how can I do it?”
“You can take her away from him. You know how such things are done. You know that if a distinguished man such as you are, with a large income such as you possess, gives a girl to understand that he is, let us say, greatly interested in her, she will soon cease to be interested in any undistinguished and penniless son of a reprobate peer who may be before her eyes.”
“I have seen such a social phenomenon,” said he. “Does your proposition suggest that I should marry the young woman with ‘a gray eye or so’?”