Very well, rejected, made a fool of. I rose, since the affair seemed to me to be ended. But he hastily pressed me back into my seat.
"Or, at least, in entrusting her to you and observing the forms that I feel a man like me owes a man like you, or to express myself more clearly--by which a father endeavours to assure his daughter's future--or, to express myself still more clearly--the dowry----"
At that I burst out laughing.
The old sharper, the old sharper! It was the dowry he had been sneaking up to! That was what the whole comedy had been about.
When he saw me laugh, he sent his dignity and his pathos and his feeling of pride to the devil and laughed heartily along with me.
"Well, if that's the way you are, old fellow," he said, "had I known it right away----"
And with that the bargain was struck.
Then the Baroness was called in, and, to her credit be it said, she forgot her assigned role and fell on my neck before her husband had had a chance, for the sake of appearances, to explain the situation.
But Iolanthe!
She appeared at the threshold pale as death, her lips tightly compressed, her eyes half shut. Without saying a word and standing there motionless as a stone, she held both hands out to me, and then allowed her parents to kiss her.