“Is your house your own design? Did you build it entirely yourself? Iforget. I ought to know; you told me all about it when I dined with you.”
“There was a house there, but I altered it considerably after my own idea, and not a bad idea, I flatter myself. I spent a good deal of money in laying out the grounds, putting up conservatories, and so forth.”
“You are a single man?”
“For a single man the house is, of course, too large; but I do not intend to remain always single, and—and now, Mr. Brookes, as we are on the subject, I had better tell you that I have asked Miss Brookes to be my wife.”
Mr. Brookes grasped at the first words. “I am sure I am very pleased to hear it, Mr. Berkins, and I hope the answer was a favourable one.”
“Miss Brookes is a modest girl. She has been well brought up, as a girl who is, I hope, to be my wife should be, and she was naturally a little overcome. I did not exactly catch what she said, and I didn't like to press her for an immediate answer. But suppose we assume for the moment that Miss Brookes's reply will be a favourable one—I have, I confess, much faith in her good sense—we might consider the business side.”
Notwithstanding his admiration of a man who had made three thousand a year more than he had succeeded in doing, Mr. Brookes could not but feel irritated at Berkins, who, with increasing gravity, continued to assume all things to his own advantage. It had not occurred to him to consider that Grace might refuse him. Why should she refuse him? She could not hope to do better. She appeared to him as a very nice girl indeed, one entirely fitted for the position for which he intended her. He understood that all girls, at least those in society, were innocent and virtuous; he understood that when they married they made faithful and dutiful wives; and he had chosen her not because he had fallen in love, nor yet because he had noticed she was likely to make a better wife than her sisters, but because she was the eldest. Even so he would be twenty years his wife's senior, and he had chosen to marry one of the Brookes girls because he knew them and saw them constantly; because he knew that at their father's death his fortune would be divided between them. Grace was, therefore, an heiress in perspective. The prospect was agreeable, but he foresaw that it would be put forward as an excuse for fixing the sum of marriage settlements as low as possible. It would, however, be difficult for Brookes to settle less on his daughter than he, Berkins, was willing to settle on his wife; so partly in the hopes of forcing Mr. Brookes, and partly because of the pleasure it gave him to speak of himself, he continued talking of his position and possessions.
“In dealing with me,” he said, “you are dealing, as you know, Mr. Brookes, with a man of means, a man who can afford to do the thing properly; you will not misunderstand me—you remember you told me that you had great difficulty in keeping the little folk who live here out of your house.”
“The neighbourhood has never been the same since they put up that row of villas. A lot of indigent fortune-hunters, they know my girls will have large fortunes at my death, so they come sneaking round the place like so many wolves.”
“I can readily sympathise with you; one doesn't make money to keep idle young fellows in the luxuries of life.”