“Faith!” said Bongrand, “I dare not take upon myself to affirm that the judges wouldn’t interpret the meaning of the law as increasing the protection given to marriage, the eternal base of society.”
Without explaining his intentions, the doctor rejected the idea of a trust. When Bongrand suggested to him a marriage with Ursula as the surest means of securing his property to her, he exclaimed, “Poor little girl! I might live fifteen years; what a fate for her!”
“Well, what will you do, then?” asked Bongrand.
“We’ll think about it—I’ll see,” said the old man, evidently at a loss for a reply.
Just then Ursula came to say that Monsieur Dionis wished to speak to the doctor.
“Already!” cried Minoret, looking at Bongrand. “Yes,” he said to Ursula, “send him here.”
“I’ll bet my spectacles to a bunch of matches that he is the advance-guard of your heirs,” said Bongrand. “They breakfasted together at the post house, and something is being engineered.”
The notary, conducted by Ursula, came to the lower end of the garden. After the usual greetings and a few insignificant remarks, Dionis asked for a private interview; Ursula and Bongrand retired to the salon.
The distrust which superior men excite in men of business is very remarkable. The latter deny them the “lesser” powers while recognizing their possession of the “higher.” It is, perhaps, a tribute to them. Seeing them always on the higher plane of human things, men of business believe them incapable of descending to the infinitely petty details which (like the dividends of finance and the microscopic facts of science) go to equalize capital and to form the worlds. They are mistaken! The man of honor and of genius sees all. Bongrand, piqued by the doctor’s silence, but impelled by a sense of Ursula’s interests which he thought endangered, resolved to defend her against the heirs. He was wretched at not knowing what was taking place between the old man and Dionis.
“No matter how pure and innocent Ursula may be,” he thought as he looked at her, “there is a point on which young girls do make their own law and their own morality. I’ll test here. The Minoret-Levraults,” he began, settling his spectacles, “might possibly ask you in marriage for their son.”