Sir Charles stood by the window for some time longer, and then he turned back to the fire, near which Lady Jane had comfortably seated herself. She was much concerned about him, yet not so much concerned as to interfere with her own arrangements—her chair just at the right angle, her screen to preserve her from the glare. She kept opening and looking at the notes that lay on her table while she talked to him.
“Oh, old Tredgold,” she said. “He was bound to object at first. About money, I suppose? That of course is the only thing he knows anything about. Did he ask you what you would settle upon her? You should have said boldly, ‘Somerton,’ and left him to find out the rest. But I don’t suppose you had the sense to stop his mouth like that. You would go and enter into explanations.”
“Never got so far,” said Sir Charles. “He that stopped my mouth. Game to lay down pound for pound with him, or else no go.”
“Pound for pound with him!” cried Lady Jane in consternation. She was so much startled that she pushed back her chair from her writing-table, and so came within the range of the fire and disorganized all her arrangements. “Now I think of it,” she said, “(pull that screen this way, Charlie) I have heard him say something like that. Pound for pound with him! Why, the old——” (she made a pause without putting in the word as so many people do), “is a millionaire!”
Sir Charles, who was standing before the fire with his back to it, in the habitual attitude of Englishmen, pulled his moustache again and solemnly nodded his head.
“And who does he think,” cried Lady Jane, carried away by her feelings, “that could do that would ever go near him and his vulgar, common—— Oh, I beg your pardon, Charlie, I am sure!” she said.
“No pardon needed. Know what you mean,” Somers said with a wave of his hand.
“Of course,” said Lady Jane with emphasis, “I don’t mean the girls, or else you may be sure I never should have taken them out or had them here.” She made a little pause after this disclaimer, in the heat of which there was perhaps just a little doubt of her own motives, checked by the reflection that Katherine Tredgold at least was not vulgar, and might have been anybody’s daughter. She went on again after a moment. “But he is an old—— Oh! I would not pay the least attention to what he said; he was bound to say that sort of thing at first. Do you imagine for a moment that any man who could do that would please Stella? What kind of man could do that? Only perhaps an old horror like himself, whom a nice girl would never look at. Oh! I think I should be easy in my mind, Charlie, if I were you. It is impossible, you know! There’s no such man, no such young man. Can you fancy Stella accepting an old fellow made of money? I don’t believe in it for a moment,” said Lady Jane.
“Old fellows got sons—sometimes,” said Sir Charles, “City men, rolling in money, don’t you know?”
“One knows all those sort of people,” said Lady Jane; “you could count them on your fingers; and they go in for rank, &c., not for other millionaires. No, Charlie, I don’t see any call you have to be so discouraged. Why did you come in looking such a whipped dog? It will be all over the island in no time and through the regiment that you have been refused by Stella Tredgold. The father’s nothing. The father was quite sure to refuse. Rather picturesque that about laying down pound for pound, isn’t it? It makes one think of a great table groaning under heaps of gold.”