THE CAPTAIN'S LETTER
A few days later, Madeline received a letter from Captain Tregony, which contained a carefully-worded, though very definite, proposal of marriage. Gervase had been only too pleased to carry out his father's suggestion. The prospect of fingering at an early date a few of her surplus dollars was a very tempting one. He was not particularly in love with her. He had got through the sentimental age, so he believed. Moreover, he had seen so much of life and the world, and had had such a wide and varied experience of feminine kind that he was not likely to be carried off his feet by a pretty face or engaging manners.
Nevertheless, if he was to marry at all—and since he was an only son and heir to a title and estates, marriage seemed a very obvious duty—then there was no one, all things considered, he would sooner take to his heart and endow with all his worldly goods than Madeline Grover. She was very young, very pretty, very sweet-tempered, and, best of all, very rich; and he knew no one else who possessed such a combination of excellencies.
It had been a great relief to him when he went out to America to make the acquaintance of John Grover's daughter, to discover that she was such an unspoiled child of nature. He had been haunted by the fear that she might be ugly or ignorant or uneducated. Hence, when he found a charming school-girl, ingenuous, unsophisticated, impressionable, he heaved a big sigh of relief, and set to work at once to make a favourable and an abiding impression.
He would have proposed then and there had he considered it politic to do so. His father, however, who was his chief adviser, would not hear of it. "You will spoil the whole game if you do," Sir Charles insisted. "Make a good impression now, and let time and absence deepen it. She will put a halo round your head after a few weeks' absence, and eagerly look forward to the next meeting."
In this Sir Charles showed his knowledge of human nature, especially of feminine human nature.
Gervase had hinted that, if he was not getting old, he was getting distinctly older, that the crows'-feet were very marked about his eyes, and that his hair was getting decidedly thin.
"My dear boy," Sir Charles said, affectionately, "that is all in your favour. If she were eight or nine and twenty, she might cast longing eyes on the youths, but a girl of seventeen always dotes on an elderly man. Always! I don't know why it should be so, but I simply state a fact. Girls have not a particle of reverence or even respect for youths of twenty-one or two. They sigh for a man who bears the scars of years and battle."
So Gervase went away to India, leaving his father to work the oracle for him at home. On the whole, Sir Charles's forecast had proved correct. Things had turned out much as he anticipated they would.
Madeline read the Captain's letter with a distinct heightening of colour. She was still weak and a little inclined to be hysterical. Her adventure on the cliffs had shaken her nerves to an extent she was only just beginning to realise.