“My dear child!” and her father shook his head at her deprecatingly. “You don’t seem to grasp the position! Here you are, engaged to marry the heir to millions of dollars and you think of nothing but my tiresome old book! Very sweet of you, but not very reasonable, is it? Jack may prefer to buy a few diamonds for you, rather than pay for the printing and publishing of work which is certain not to be favoured by the general public—”
She interrupted him with a kiss.
“Diamonds!” she exclaimed. “Diamonds for me! Absurd! Just think of it! I don’t want them, Dad! They wouldn’t suit me—I’d rather have—roses!”
She ran off gaily and sought the Philosopher, whom she found smoking in the loggia which led out of the drawing-room into the garden. As he saw her coming he held up a warning hand.
“Now, don’t!” he said. “Don’t rush at me with your news because I know it already! I told you—or rather I hinted—that old Durham was a millionaire. His nut-cracker face expressed it. A hard old, close-fisted, never-give-in, American grasper and grabber!” Here he smiled benevolently. “And now he’s loosened the strings of his money-bags in favour of his only son, as he should do, during that son’s life-time—an eminently practical arrangement—saves all the death duties. And you”—here he bent his fuzzy brows and looked searchingly at her—“you will be one of the richest little ladies in the world!—dear, dear me! I wonder how you’ll stand it!”
She came close to his side and stood looking at him wistfully. Somehow, despite his rather shabby old coat and not very well arranged hair his personality had a singular attractiveness,—a something quite out of the common. Out of the common!—yes—that was it! Intellectuality had graven certain distinctive marks on his features not found among “ordinary” men, and she bethought herself that she had seen these very lines of thought, study and attainment smooth out into an almost boyish softness when his eyes had rested on herself, or when she had looked up at him in quiet attention as she was looking now.
“You wonder how I’ll stand it!” she said. “Being rich? Yes,—I wonder how I will! Not very wisely, I’m afraid! I’ve never been rich,—and just now I can only realise one advantage of it—I can pay all the expenses of publishing Dad’s book!”
The Philosopher drew his pipe slowly from his mouth and looked at it.
“Oh, that’s what you want to do, is it?” he remarked, somewhat gruffly. “Well! I’m not surprised! Very sentimental, and very like you! To put your first big pocket-money into the ready maw of a publisher is just what I expected of you!”
She came a little closer, and touched his hand timidly.