“What is it but to receive, from consenting hands, the principal treasure of the rich? If I’m rich, my daughter is my largest property, and I freely make her over. I shall, in other words, forgive my young friend his low opinions if he renounces them for you.”
Cora, at this, started as with a glimpse of delight. “He won’t renounce them! He shan’t!”
Her father appeared still to enjoy the ingenious way he had put it, so that he had good humour to spare. “If you suggest that you’re in political sympathy with him, you mean then that you’ll take him as he is?”
“I won’t take him at all!” she protested with her head very high; but she had no sooner uttered the words than the sound of the approach of wheels caused her dignity to drop. “A fly?—it must be he!” She turned right and left, for a retreat or an escape, but her father had already caught her by the wrist. “Surely,” she pitifully panted, “you don’t want me to bounce on him thus?”
Mr. Prodmore, as he held her, estimated the effect. “Your frock won’t do—with what it cost me?”
“It’s not my frock, papa,—it’s his thinking I’ve come here for him to see me!”
He let her go and, as she moved away, had another look for the social value of the view of her stout back. It appeared to determine him, for, with a touch of mercy, he passed his word. “He doesn’t think it, and he shan’t know it.”
The girl had made for the door of the morning-room, before reaching which she flirted breathlessly round. “But he knows you want me to hook him!”
Mr. Prodmore was already in the parliamentary attitude the occasion had suggested to him for the reception of his visitor. “The way to ‘hook’ him will be not to be hopelessly vulgar. He doesn’t know that you know anything.” The house-bell clinked, and he waved his companion away. “Await us there with tea, and mind you toe the mark!”
Chivers, at this moment, summoned by the bell, reappeared in the morning-room doorway, and Cora’s dismay brushed him as he sidled past her and off into the passage to the front. Then, from the threshold of her refuge, she launched a last appeal. “Don’t kill me, father: give me time!” With which she dashed into the room, closing the door with a bang.