“When I asked you to marry me I explained how I was situated.”
“I know—won’t papa?—He’s very generous.”
“He can’t. He is very seriously embarrassed.”
The girl’s breath shortened painfully. She turned very white. Unconsciously she twisted her hands together.
“Then we cannot marry?”
“How can we? Do you want to spend your life hounded by lawyers, money-lenders, and financial syndicates, and unable to keep up your position? You would die of misery, poor child. I am not a man to make a woman happy on three hundred thousand pounds a year. Poor! It would be hell.”
She did not look up, but sat twirling her rings.
“You know best,” she said, “I don’t know the conditions of life in England. If you say that we should be miserable, you must know. I suppose you did not love me very much.”
“Not much, Mabel. I have only the skeleton of a heart in me. I wonder it does duty at all. You are well rid of me.”
“You certainly did not make any very violent protestations. I cannot accuse you of hypocrisy.”