"Sir!"
"When Dora marries she will have that income to commence with. Should her marriage prove a happy one, it will be increased."
He paused, as if for me to speak. I deemed silence to be the better part of wisdom.
"The man who marries Dora will have to have a clean slate, if it has to be cleaned for the occasion. I shall require him to give me a correct statement of his position. I will see that his house is set in order. He will have to take my name; Dora shall always be a Jardine. He will have to enter public life."
"Public life?"
"Have you any objection?"
"It depends upon what you mean, sir, by public life; it is an elastic term."
"He will have to enter Parliament. Means will be furnished to enable him to do so. As a country gentleman he will have to take an interest in local and in county government. He will have to play a prominent part on the stage of national politics. He will have to aim at the top of the tree. Dora has ambitions; her husband must have them too."
When he paused I was silent again. There was a cut-and-dried way about his fashion of settling things which nettled me.
"Have you no ambitions, Townsend?"