But my heart was thumping at my ribs in abject cowardice.
The old man received me at the door. He behaved as if he hadn't the faintest suspicion of what was doing.
When I asked him for a talk in private, he looked surprised and made a face, like a man scenting a "touch" from an unexpected quarter.
"You'll soon be pulling in your sails," I thought. I naturally supposed that at the first word there would be an excellently acted emotional scene--kisses, tears of joy, and the rest of the rigmarole.
That's how vain it makes you, gentlemen, to possess a wide purse.
But the old fox knew how to drive a bargain. He knew you had to run down the prospective purchaser in order to run up the price of your goods.
After I proposed for his daughter's hand, he said, all puffed up with suddenly acquired dignity:
"I beg pardon, Baron, but who will guarantee that this alliance, which--revolve the matter as you will--has something unnatural about it--who will guarantee that it will turn out happy? Who will guarantee that two years from now my daughter won't come running back home some night, bareheaded, in her nightgown, and say, 'Father, I can't live with that old man. Let me stay here with you'?"
Gentlemen, that was tough.
"And in view of all these circumstances," he continued, "I am not justified as an honourable man and father in entrusting my daughter to you----"