Elsa made an impatient movement with her hand, as though to brush aside all this web of words.
“Why do you take so much trouble to force an unhappy girl into a hateful marriage?” she asked. “How can such a thing advantage you?”
“Ah!” answered Ramiro briskly, “I perceive I have to do with a woman of business, one who has that rarest of gifts—common sense. I will be frank. Your esteemed father died possessed of a very large fortune, which to-day is your property as his sole issue and heiress. Under the marriage laws, which I myself think unjust, that fortune will pass into the power of any husband whom you choose to take. Therefore, so soon as you are made his wife it will pass to Adrian. I am Adrian’s father, and, as it happens, he is pecuniarily indebted to me to a considerable amount, so that, in the upshot, as he himself has pointed out more than once, this alliance will provide for both of us. But business details are wearisome, so I need not enlarge.”
“The fortune you speak of, Señor Ramiro, is lost.”
“It is lost, but I have reason to hope that it will be found.”
“You mean that this is purely a matter of money?”
“So far as I am concerned, purely. For Adrian’s feelings I cannot speak, since who knows the mystery of another’s heart?”
“Then, if the money were forthcoming—or a clue to it—there need be no marriage?”
“So far as I am concerned, none at all.”
“And if the money is not forthcoming, and I refuse to marry the Heer Adrian, or he to marry me—what then?”