“Have I ever refused to ask Miss Craven to marry me?”
“Have you ever asked her—that’s the matter before us?”
“Never. But what does that mean? Why, simply that I have before me instead of behind me a most interesting quarter of an hour—I suppose a penniless man can ask a wealthy woman inside a quarter of an hour, to marry him. The proposition doesn’t take longer in such a case than an honourable one would.”
“You are speaking in a way that is not becoming in a son addressing his father,” said Lord Fotheringay. “You almost make me ashamed of you.”
“You have had no reason to be ashamed of me yet,” said Harold. “So long as I refrain from doing what you command me to do, I give you no cause to be ashamed of me.”
“That is a pretty thing for a son to say,” cried the father, indignantly.
“For heaven’s sake don’t let us begin a family broil under the windows of a house where we are guests,” said the son, rising quickly from the chair. “We are on the border of a genuine family bickering. For God’s sake let us stop in time.”
“I did not come here to bicker,” said the father. “Heavens above! Am I not entitled to some show of gratitude at least for having come more than a thousand miles—a hundred of them in an Irish train and ten of them on an Irish jolting car—simply to see that you are comfortably settled for life?”
“Yes,” said the son, “I suppose I should feel grateful to you for coming so far to tell me that you are ruined and that I am a partner in your ruin.” He had not seated himself, and now he turned his back upon his father and walked round to the west side of the Castle where some of the girls were strolling. They were waiting to see how the day would develop—if they should put on oilskins and sou’westers or gauzes and gossamer—the weather on the confines of the ocean knows only the extremes of winter or summer.
The furthest of the watchers were, he perceived, Edmund Airey and Miss Avon. He walked toward them, and pronounced in a somewhat irresponsible way an opinion upon the weather.