“She confessed as much to me,” said the perturbed banker.
Old Sanders tapped with both hands on his shining cranium and asked, “Are you confident he loves her?”
“No. Even if he does not, he no doubt makes the pretense, and she believes him. A man who fiddles for money is not likely to ignore an opportunity to angle for the same commodity,” and the banker, with a look of scorn on his face, threw himself back into the chair.
“Does she know that you do not approve of this man?”
“I told her that I desired the musician’s visits to cease.”
“And her answer?”
“She said she would obey me if I could name one reasonable objection to the man, and then, with an air of absolute confidence in the impossibility of such a contingency, added, ‘But you can not.’”
“Yes, but you must,” said Sanders. “Mildred is strangely constituted. If she loves this man, her love can be more deadly to the choice of her heart than her hate to one she abhors. The impatience of restraint you speak of and her very inability to brook opposition can be turned to good account now.” And old Sanders again tapped in the rhythm of a dirge on his parchment-bound cranium.
“Your plan?” eagerly asked the father, whose confidence in his secretary was absolute.
“I would like to study them together. Your position will be stronger with Mildred if you show no open opposition to the man or his aspirations; bring us together at your house some evening, and if I can not enter a wedge of discontent, then they are not as others.”