"Oh, I?" shrugged De Presle-Vaulx, "I'm already half cowboy!"
Mary Falconer put her arm round Molly's waist, drew her to her, "and Molly is more than half Marquise."
"Mr. Bulstrode," again cried the girl impetuously. "Please reason with him! He's horribly obstinate. You have put this dreadful idea in his head; now please tell him how ridiculous it is. If he goes West and spoils his career and breaks with his family, I'll never marry him! As it is, I will wait for ever!"
"But my dear child!" Mary Falconer was determined to have the whole thing out before them, "you don't seem to get it into your head that you have neither of you a sou, and Maurice can never earn any money in France."
Miss Malines, to whom money meant that she drew on her father, the extravagant stockbroker whose seat even in the Stock Exchange was mortgaged, and who had not ten thousand dollars' capital in the world—lost countenance here at the cruel and vulgar introduction of the commodity on which life turns. She sighed, her lips trembled, and she capitulated:
"Oh, if that's really true ... as I suppose it is——"
Bulstrode watched her, she had grown pale—she drew a deep breath, and, looking up, not at her lover, but at the elder man, said softly:
"Why, I guess I'll have to give him quite up then."
But here De Presle-Vaulx made an exclamation, and before them all took Molly in his arms:
"No," he said tenderly, "never, never! That the last of all! Mr. Bulstrode is right. I must work for you, and I will. We'll both go West together. Couldn't you? Wouldn't you come with me?"