Rowland looked at him for some time with a baffled air. Then he tried his last coup. “My wife told me,” he said—“I hope she did not betray your confidence—that there was something about Marion.”
A sudden flush of colour went over Eddy’s face, and he began to move his foot nervously, as he did when he was excited.
“And that you had,” Rowland said, with an inflection of laughter in his voice not to be concealed, “a very just appreciation of her. Now, my man, without some such probation there could be no thought of my daughter, you must know.”
Eddy sat with his head bent, swinging his foot, and for a moment made no reply. At last he said, “How long, sir, do you mean the probation to last?”
“Let us say at a venture three years.”
“Three years!” said Eddy, with comic despair. “Mr. Rowland, I am very fond of Marion, though—and I shouldn’t wonder if she could fancy me. She has a poor opinion of me, but that needn’t matter. We could always get on together. But do you think, from what you know, that if somebody with a handle to his name turned up after the drawing-room, that Marion would wait for me out ranching in California for three years?”
In spite of himself, Rowland laughed. “I never could take upon myself to say, Eddy, what love might do.”
“No?” said Eddy, with his head on one side, and a look of interrogation. “I think I could take it upon myself,” he added. “We might be very fond of each other: and I, of course, would be out of the way of temptation out there; besides, I’m not the kind of man that falls much in love. But Marion: excuse me for talking so freely, sir, but you’ve put it to me. I should find Marion Lady Something-or-other, when I came back at the end of my three years.”
“Then you don’t think it worth your while?” Rowland said.
“I did not say that: whatever you say is worth the while. I’ll go if you press it; and if I don’t come back at all, it will be the less matter. But if you ask me, sir, frankly, I don’t think it’s good enough so far as Marion is concerned. She would never wait for a fellow out ranching. I don’t see why she should, for my part.”