"It's nothing more than a passing fad with this person—besides, that's not what I've to tell you."
"But you, yourself, were not averse to Fred's marrying her, in spite of these opinions you must secretly have held."
"Not while it seemed absolutely necessary—not while the case was so brutally desperate, when we were actually pressed—"
"Remember, my dear, there's nothing magic in those ten thousand dollars. They're winged dollars like all their mates, and most of them, I'm sorry to say, have already flown to places where they'd long been expected."
Mrs. Milbrey's sensation was no longer to be repressed. She had toyed with the situation sufficiently. Her husband was now skilfully dissecting the devilled thighs of an immature chicken.
"Horace," said his wife, impressively, "Avice has had an offer of marriage—from—"
He looked up with new interest.
"From Rulon Shepler."
He dropped knife and fork. Shepler, the man of mighty millions! The undisputed monarch of finance! The cold-blooded, calculating sybarite in his lighter moments, but a man whose values as a son-in-law were so ideally superb that the Milbrey ambition had never vaulted high enough even to overlook them for one daring moment! Shepler, whom he had known so long and so intimately, with never the audacious thought of a union so stupendously glorious!
"Margaret, you're jesting!"