“I think I came because I could not stay away,” he said.
“Then it never occurred to you that my daughter might fall in love with you?”
A flush crept into Weston’s face.
“At least,” he said, “I never came here with the intention of profiting by that possibility.”
Stirling laughed in a rather dry fashion.
“Then she was to do it all at once, when you intimated that she had permission to?”
“It almost looks like that,” Weston admitted, with an embarrassment that surpassed anything he had expected. “I’m afraid,” and he made a deprecatory gesture, “that I’ve made a deplorable mess of the whole affair.”
“You have,” said Stirling. “As it happens, however, that’s in your favor. If you’d shown yourself a cleverer man in this matter, it might have occurred to me that it was Miss Stirling’s money that you had your eyes on.”
Weston turned and gazed at him with the blood in his forehead.
“I wish with all my heart that Miss Stirling’s money were at the bottom of the sea!” he said passionately. “There’s just another thing I have to say. I came to your house in a fit of desperation a little while ago, so shaken by what I had just had to face that I was off my guard. When I told Miss Stirling what I felt for her it was a folly—but I did it—and I have no excuse to make.”