"It would have been no disgrace to him to make you his wife," he said, "but the Delafields have ever pretended to a pride in excess of their rank. He did ill to offer you his affection upon those terms; yet I'll swear his vows of love were sincere. I have but just left him, and I never saw more distress of mind than I saw in his face to-day. When I told him that you had been drooping, he implored me to call in his own physician, at his charge."
"Oh, pray, sir, do not tell me how he looked or what he said!" cried Tonia, with a passionate impatience, drying her tears as she spoke, which broke out afresh before she had done. "I doubt he thinks money can heal every wound. He offered to lavish his fortune upon me, and marvelled that I could prefer this shabby parlour to a handsome house and dishonour."
"He did very ill," said Thornton, in a soothing voice, as if he were consoling a child in some childish trouble; "yet, my dearest Tonia, did you but know the world as well as I do, you would know that he made you what the world calls a handsome offer. To settle a fortune upon you—of course he would mean a settlement: anything else were unworthy of a thought—would be to give you the strongest pledge of his fidelity. Men who do not mean to be constant will not so engage their fortune. And if—if the foolish Delafield pride—that Irish pride, which counts a long line of ancestors as a sacred inheritance—stands in the way of marriage—I'll be hanged if I think you ought to have rejected him without the compliment of considering his offer and of consulting me."
"Father!"
She sprang up to her feet, and stood before him in all the dignity of her tall figure; and her face, with the tears streaming over it, was white with anger and contempt.
"My love, life is made up of compromises. Sure, I have tried to keep your mind clear of foolish prejudices; and, as a student of history, you must have seen the influences that govern the world. Beauty is one, and the most powerful, of those influences. Aspasia—Agnes Sorel—Madame de Pompadour. Need I multiply instances? But Beauty mewed up in a two-pair lodging is worthless to the possessor; while, with a fine establishment, a devoted protector, my dearest girl might command the highest company in the town."
"Father!" she cried again, with a voice that had a sharp ring of agony, "would you have had me say yes?"
"I would have had you consider your answer very seriously before you said no."
"You could have suffered your daughter to stoop to such humiliation; you would have had her listen to the proposal of a man who is free to marry any one he pleases—but will not marry her; who tells her in one breath that he loves her—and in the next that he will not make her his wife—oh, father, I did not think——"
"That I was a man of the world? My poor child, some of the greatest matches in England have begun with unfettered love; and be sure that, were your affection to consent to such a sacrifice, Kilrush would end by giving you his name."