"Do you really mean--but no, you cannot mean your friend the organist?"
Mary bowed her head in silence and looked expectantly in her brother's face, till his rising colour and the gathering frown left no doubt as to his reception of her tidings; then she removed her eyes with a heavy sigh and let them fall on the carpet.
"You cannot mean it, Mary? You!--my father's daughter!--my sister!--to engage yourself to marry a kind of fiddler!"
"He is not a fiddler, in your sense, Gerald, although he can play the violin, and indeed most other instruments. He is a cultured person, and has his university degree--Bachelor of Music--while few of those who try to look down on him have had the chance even to get plucked for one, having never gone to college at all."
"He plays tunes at any rate in a church loft on Sundays for a living. Is that a fit occupation for the man who would marry my sister?"
"Remember the great composers, Gerald. More than one of them was a chapelmaster, which is just an organist."
"The great fiddlesticks! If you had seen them in their lifetime in their frowzy little German houses and dirty linen, with their wives cooking their dinner, such as it was, for there was little enough at times to put in the pot, you would think less of their greatness. What good is the greatness which is not found out till after you are dead? A great fortune! That is the only greatness a sensible woman will marry to."
"Shame, Gerald! You do not mean what you say. You have been married yourself, and I know you loved and honoured your wife. Do you mean now to say that your wife was a fool because she married you when you were not rich? Or is it that she was mercenary and married you for your money?"
"Tush! Mary. You never saw poor Jeanne, so you cannot speak about her. The beautiful darling!" Gerald's voice grew husky here, and there was some coughing before he could resume.
"No! She was not mercenary, and she was not a fool. She married me when I was a poor man because we loved one another, and she did not think about money. But if she had, it was not an unwise thing, as it turned out, which she did in marrying me, for I managed her property successfully, and more than doubled its value."