"Attached to her? Attached to my darling daughter? Are you mad, Osbert?"
"I don't think so. I am still a bachelor, you know, and the proposal which I put before you is this: If your daughter will undertake the position which her mother declined, we will cry quits, you and I."
She had almost screamed in the extremity of her surprise and mortification. Had he struck her with a horsewhip she could not have felt more outraged. Fury, resentment, a wild, combative resistance which she could not recognise as jealousy, deprived her for a while of speech. She was choking, inarticulate with the force of blind feeling which shook her as a tempest shakes a tree.
"You are atrocious!" she ejaculated at last. "Simply atrocious! What can you mean? Virgie won't have you."
"In that case there will be no need of further discussion," was his answer. "In your place, I think I should at least place the offer before her. Should she accept it, I will make you an allowance of three hundred pounds a year for life, besides undertaking the cost of your son's education. Are there other children?"
She was staring at him as one may gaze, fascinated, upon a cobra about to strike. "One other," she hurriedly replied. "A little girl—she is lame."
"Ha!" A dull flush rose to his face. "Cripples seem to haunt your footsteps. Well—in the event of the acceptance of my offer, it shall be my care to see that she has the proper treatment and the best advice."
"Good gracious me!" slowly said the bewildered woman. "Am I dreaming? Osbert, you must be mad!"
"Madam, I think you will find that I am considered remarkably sane by most people. Anyway, you have my offer—make what you can of it. I will put it in writing, if you like. Your daughter won't find many husbands who would be willing to marry and provide for the entire family. Yet, you see, such is my devotion, that I am ready to do even this for her charming sake."
"Devotion? You have no devotion!" she cried wildly. "You are taking advantage of my helplessness to torture me! You would torture Virgie! How can you feel any devotion for a girl you have only set eyes upon once?"