His partner looked at him, pursed up his lips to whistle, then remembered and shook his head instead.
“No,” he answered. “Barbara is a nice girl, but I should not have imagined her capable of inspiring such sentiments in a man almost old enough to be her father. I think that you are the victim of a kind of mania, which I have heard of but never experienced. Venus—or is it Cupid?—has netted you, my dear Aylward.”
“Oh! pray leave gods and goddesses out of it, we have had enough of them already,” he answered, exasperated. “That is my case at any rate, and what I want to know now is if I have your support in my suit. Remember, I have something to offer, Haswell, for instance, a large fortune of which I will settle half—it is a good thing to do in our business,—and a baronetcy that will be a peerage before long.”
“A peerage! Have you squared that?”
“I think so. There will be a General Election within the next three months, and on such occasions a couple of hundred thousand in cool cash come in useful to a Party that is short of ready money. I think I may say that it is settled. She will be the Lady Aylward, or any other name she may fancy, and one of the richest women in England. Now have I your support?”
“Yes, my dear friend, why not, though Barbara does not want money, for she has plenty of her own, in first-class securities that I could never persuade her to vary, for she is shrewd in that way and steadily refuses to sign anything. Also she will probably be my heiress—and, Aylward,” here a sickly look of alarm spread itself over his face, “I don’t know how long I have to live. That infernal doctor examined my heart this morning and told me that it was weak. Weak was his word, but from the tone in which he said it, I believe that he meant more. Aylward, I gather that I may die any day.”
“Nonsense, Haswell, so may we all,” he replied, with an affectation of cheerfulness which failed to carry conviction.
Presently Mr. Haswell, who had hidden his face in his hand, looked up with a sigh and said:
“Oh! yes, of course you have my support, for after all she is my only relation and I should be glad to see her safely married. Also, as it happens, she can’t marry anyone without my consent, at any rate until she is five-and-twenty, for if she does, under her father’s will all her property goes away, most of it to charities, except a beggarly £200 a year. You see my brother John had a great horror of imprudent marriages and a still greater belief in me, which as it chances, is a good thing for you.”
“Had he?” said Sir Robert. “And pray why is it a good thing for me?”