"What is that, Monsieur?"
"Marry money and a woman he does not love."
They walked on for some moments in silence, and came to the turf entrenchment raised against the wind, as against an assaulting army. They passed through a gangway, cut in the embankment, to one of the seats built against the outer side of it. Below them lay the clean sands, stretching away on either side in unbroken smoothness—the sands of Corton.
"And why will he not take your advice?" asked Lucille.
"Because he is a pig-headed fool—as his father was before him. It is all his father's fault, for placing him in such an impossible position."
"I do not understand," said Lucille.
John Turner crossed his legs with a grunt of obesity.
"It is nevertheless simple, Mademoiselle," he said; "father and son quarrelled because old Howard, who was as obstinate as his son, made up his mind that Dick should marry Isabella Gayerson. Plenty of money, adjoining estates, the old story of misery with many servants. Dick, being his father's son, at once determined that he would do no such thing, and there was a row royal. Dick went off to Paris, in debt and heedless of the old man's threat to cut him off with a shilling. He had never cared for Isabella, and was not going to sell his liberty for the sake of a ring fence. His own words, Mademoiselle. At Paris sundry things happened to him, of which you probably know more than I."
He glanced up at Lucille, who was picking blades of grass from the embankment against which he leant. Her eyelids flickered, but she made no reply.
"Then," went on John Turner, "his father died suddenly, and it transpired that the hot-headed old fool had made one of those wills which hot-headed old fools make for the special delectation of novelists and lawyers. He had left Dick penniless, unless he consented to marry Isabella. When Dick told your father he was poor, he was well within the limits of the truth, although he did it, as I understand, to gain his own ends. When he told you a different story, he merely assumed that this quarrel, like others, would end in a reconciliation. He felt remorseful that he had practised a mild deception on your father, and wished to clear his conscience. Death intervened at this moment, and placed our young friend in the uncomfortable position of having told untruths all round. You probably know better than I do, Mademoiselle, why he got himself into this hobble."