"Yes, father," said Alicia. Then Pinto's face broke into a sort of crooked smile and he held out his hands to both of them.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he said. "Think of my Peaches picking out a friend of her father's! Why, Markheim, you must be somewhere near my own age!"
"Why, pa, how rude!" said Alicia. "Aren't you going to kiss me? And you too, Free! Stop standing there like a dummy! People get married all the time—there's nothing unusual about it, you poor nuts! Come on, congratulate us!"
Well, of course, I recovered myself as best I could, and pecked her on the cheek. But I didn't feel my congratulations—I simply couldn't feel them. To marry that old man. And a foreigner! And a German Swiss! And everything! It was too dreadful! Nothing could make me feel that she was doing it for any reason except pity and because he had nagged her into it with his ceaseless attentions. Of course we had nothing against him, absolutely nothing, because after all being a millionaire art collector is not in itself strictly criminal. But with the memory of that beautiful romance in Italy still fresh in my own mind I could not understand it—I simply could not; and every fiber of my being resented it. Youth and age! It was all wrong. She had a silly notion that her heart was dead, and that it didn't matter what she did. That if it gave Sebastian happiness to marry her—why, he was good and kind and rich and cultured and famous, and why not give joy since one could no longer experience it?
I could see in a flash what had gone on in her simple, honest, generous mind, and it nearly drove me wild, while all the time I had to stand there grinning and patting her on the shoulder, and saying how wonderful it all was, when in reality I wanted to drag her out of the room and shake her for being such a great silly fool, and force her to stop it before anyone else heard of her folly and she found herself in the complications of public knowledge of her engagement.
Instead of which I stood round and admired the wonderful five-carat diamond ring which Markheim produced, and behaved like an idiot generally.
"Well, well, when is it to be?" Mr. Pegg wanted to know.
Alicia turned her big eyes slowly from her marvelous jewel to her father's puzzled face.
"I have promised Sebastian," she said slowly, "to marry him as soon as the war is over!"
Her tone had, to my ears, the expectancy of a long reprieve.