He did not speak violently, but judicially, as one summing up a case.
"I went down there once, you may remember, for a week-end, while they were still at Lissendean," he continued. "I took her measure then. She is a woman who would fleece any man who could be got to admire her. She is that type. You think the girl is different. I tell you that what is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh. The girl isn't to be trusted any more than the mother. You see the position—absolutely destitute! Three of them! What is to happen? Say you marry—say you allow her two or three hundred a year—that's going to cripple you, and it isn't going to keep her." He spoke with ever-increasing urgency. "If you give her three, she'll spend five. If you give her five, she'll spend eight. Can't you see that for yourself, Gerald? It's all in that letter—every word of it—if you read between the lines."
"It's a contemptible letter," said Gerald, pushing back his chair abruptly; "but I can't believe that the girl——"
"Gerald, put it to yourself a moment. Even if the girl is the best girl in the world, are you prepared to keep the lot? Virginia's very qualities—her love for her family, her generosity where they are concerned—would be your ruin. You couldn't say no to her; she couldn't say no to them. There you would all be."
Gerald's face hardened. His likeness to his father came out clearly—breaking, as it were, through the polish of his public school and university training. He saw the case with the Rosenberg eye, and he flinched.
"But how," he stammered, and cleared his throat, "how am I to draw back with honour, father?"
"I've done that for you. That is, the way out is open if you will take it. The Liverpool house wrote me this morning, asking to have you sent down for a week—some bother about that inspector, Routledge; you know the man. I wired to the hotel that you might come on by the night train. It may fairly be called urgent. My counsel to you is that you just bolt—bolt and get clear away before you have committed yourself to a thing which must be hopeless."
Gerald leaned forward, covering his face with his hands. It was a very rare sign of feeling with him.
"You haven't committed yourself—you haven't said or done anything that makes it impossible to draw back?" asked the elder man in deep anxiety. "You said you hadn't."
"That is true. I have said nothing. I am not even certain what her answer would be. I could not say that she had given me any reason to hope. She is so serene, so impartially sweet, one cannot tell—like my 'Last Duchess,' you know—'who passed without much the same smile'?"