"Sit down, please, on this sofa. I can not talk to you when you are standing. You look too cold and too imperious. I have come to-day for your answer, Virginia."
They sat upon the sofa together, he turning so as to read her face, which was bent down as she played with the diamond ring upon her finger. She looked cool and quiet enough to dampen the ardor of her lover; but he was so absorbed in his own feelings that he could not and would not understand it.
"Speak, Virginia! I can not bear this suspense."
Still she hesitated; she liked him too well to take any pleasure in giving him pain, frivolous coquette though she was.
"I have questioned my heart closely, Philip, as you bade me," she began after a few moments, "and I have satisfied myself that I can never be happy as the wife of a poor man."
"Then you do not love me! Love does not put itself in the scales and demand to be balanced with gold."
"But gold is very necessary to its welfare and long life. No, Philip, I do not know that I love you—perhaps I do not—since I am not willing to make this sacrifice. I certainly think better of you than of any other living man, except my father; I would rather marry you than any other man, if you had the wealth necessary to support me in the station for which only I am fitted. A young man, with nothing to rely upon but the profession of the law, in a great city like this, must expect to wait some time before he can pour many honors and much wealth into the lap of the woman he loves."
"You are sarcastic, Virginia!"
"No, only practical. My father is not so rich as in days gone by. His fortune has dwindled until it is barely sufficient to keep up the house in the old style. If I would still preserve the family pride, still rule queen of the circle I have brought around me, I must marry rich."