“He will not.”
“Have you asked him?”
“No.”
Again Dick was silent for a minute, and then he went on: “Look here, d'Haricot, old man, this is how it is. I know my father; he's one of the best, but if I've got any prejudices I inherit them honestly. What he likes he likes, and what he doesn't like he doesn't like. He doesn't like Agnes, he doesn't like her family—or didn't like 'em. He doesn't like younger sons marrying poor girls. On the other hand, he does like the 'right kind of people,' as he calls 'em, and the right sort of marriage, and he does like me too well, I think, to see me doing what he doesn't like. I have only a hundred a year of my own, and expectations from an aunt of fifty-two who has never had a day's illness in her life. You see?”
“What will you do?” I asked.
“What can I do?” he replied, and added, “it is pleasant folly.”
His brows were knitted, his mouth shut tight, his eyes hard. He had come down to stern realities and the mood of tenderness had passed.
“But you really love her?” I said.
His face lit up for a moment. “I do,” he answered, and then quickly the face clouded again.
“My friend,” I said, “I, too, have a friend—a girl, whom I place before the rest of the world; I share your sentiments and I judge your case for you. What is life without woman, without love? Would you place your income, your prospects, the sordid aspects of your life, even the displeasure of relations, before the most sacred passion of your heart? Dick, if you do not say to this dear girl, 'I love you; let the devil himself try to part us! I shall not think of you as the same friend.”