“Alas! that I must say it. I believe my son to be that basest of creatures, a fortune-hunter. How did he get that money left to him by another woman?”
“Don’t know, I’m sure. Perhaps the old girl found the young chap attractive, and wished to acknowledge favours received. Such things have been known. You don’t suppose he forged her will, do you?”
“You are ribald, Sir, ribald.”
“Am I? Well, and you are jolly offensive. Thank God you weren’t my father. Now, from what I remember of that boy of yours, I shouldn’t have thought that he was a fortune-hunter. I should have thought that he was a young beggar who wished to get hold of the girl he fancies, and that’s all. Still, you know him best, and I dare say you are right. Anyway, for your own peculiar and crack-brained reasons, you don’t want this business, and I say at once you can’t want it less than I do. Do you suppose that I wish to see my only child, who will have half a million of money and might be a countess, or half a dozen countesses, to-morrow, married to the son of a beggarly sniveller like you, for as you are so fond of the pure and sacred truth, I’ll give it you—a fellow who can come and peach upon your own boy and his girl.”
“My conscience and my duty——” began Mr. Knight.
“Oh! drat your conscience and blow your duty. You’re a spy and a backbiting tell-tale, that’s what you are. Did you never kiss a girl yourself?”
“Never until after I was married, when we are specially enjoined by the great Apostle——”
“Then I’m sorry for your wife, for she must have had a lot to teach you. But let’s stop slanging, we have our own opinions of each other and there’s an end. Now we have both the same object, you because you are a pious crank and no more human than a dried eel, and I because I am a man of the world who want to see my daughter where she ought to be, wearing a coronet in the House of Lords. The question is: How is the job to be done? You don’t understand Isobel, but I do. If her back is put up, wild horses won’t move her. She’d snap her fingers in my face, and tell me to go to a place that you are better acquainted with than I am, or will be, and take my money with me. Of course, I could hold her for a few months, till she is of age perhaps, but after that, No. So it seems that the only chance is your son. Now, what’s his weak point? Can he be bought off?”
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Knight.
“Oh! that’s odd in one who, you say, is a fortune-hunter. Well, what is it? Everyone has a weak point, and another girl won’t do just now.”