"Rather than blight the prospects of so pure and lovely a creature I will make every sacrifice short of honor—let it be $30,000, Mr. Monson?"
"As you please, sir—so that it be covered by $30,000 of your own."
"My nature revolts at the proposition, and so—good morning, sir."
Tom left the house, and Mr. Monson laughed heartily; so heartily, indeed, as to prove how much he relished the success of his scheme.
"Talk of Scylla and Charybdis!" soliloquized the discomfited Tom, as he wiped the perspiration from his face—"Where the d—l does he think I am to find the $50,000 he wants, unless he first gives them to me? I never heard of so unreasonable an old chap! Here is a young fellow that offers to marry his daughter for $30,000—half price, as one may say—and he talks about covering every cent he lays down with one of my own. I never knew what was meant by cent. per cent. before. Let me see; I've just thirty-two dollars and sixty-nine cents, and had we played at a game of coppers, I couldn't have held out half an hour. But, I flatter myself, I touched the old scamp up with morals, in a way he wasn't used to. Well, as this thing is over, I will try old Sweet, the grocer's daughter. If the wardrobe and whiskers fail there, I must rub up the Greek and Latin, and shift the ground to Boston. They say a chap with a little of the classics can get $30 or 40,000, there, any day in the week. I wish my parents had brought me up a schoolmaster; I would be off in the first boat. Blast it!—I thought when I came down to $30,000, he would have snapped at the bait, like a pike. He'll never have a chance to get her off so cheap, again."
{cent. per cent. = one hundred percent}
This ended the passage of flirtation between Thomas Thurston and Julia Monson. As for the latter, she took such a distaste for me, that she presented me to Mademoiselle Hennequin, at the first opportunity, under the pretence that she had discovered a strong wish in the latter to possess me.
Adrienne accepted the present with some reluctance, on account of the price that had been paid for me, and yet with strong emotion. How she wept over me, the first time we were alone together! I thought her heart would break; nor am I certain it would not, but for the timely interposition of Julia, who came and set her laughing by a humorous narrative of what had occurred between her father and her lover.
That night the rout took place. It went off with eclat, but I did not make my appearance at it, Adrienne rightly judging that I was not a proper companion for one in her situation. It is true, this is not a very American notion, EVERY thing being suitable for EVERY body, that get them, in this land of liberty, but Adrienne had not been educated in a land of liberty, and fancied that her dress should bear some relation to her means. Little did she know that I was a sort of patent of nobility, and that by exhibiting me, she might have excited envy, even in an alderman's daughter. My non-appearance, however, made no difference with Betts Shoreham, whose attentions throughout the evening were so marked as to raise suspicion of the truth in the mind of even Mrs. Monson.
{rout = evening party; eclat = brilliance}