There was a long pause, while the other weighed this utterance. “Sylvia,” she said, at last, “he has a great deal of money.”
“I have heard that fact mentioned,” responded the girl.
“But have you realized, my dear, how much money he has?”
To which Sylvia answered, “We are not taught to think so deliberately about money in the South.”
Again there was a silence. She divined that Mrs. Winthrop was struggling desperately to be noble. “Do I understand you to mean, Sylvia, that you would really refuse to marry him if he asked you?”
“I most certainly mean it,” was her reply—and it was given convincingly.
The other drew a breath of relief. She had found the struggle exhausting. “My dear child,” she said, “I appreciate your fineness of character.” She paused. “But tell me this—if you do not intend to marry Douglas, ought you to permit him to compromise himself for you?”
“Compromise himself, Mrs. Winthrop? I don’t understand you.”
“I mean, Sylvia, that he is exposing himself to the ridicule of his friends—he is making a spectacle of himself to the whole University. And then, after he has done this, you propose to cap the climax of his humiliation by refusing to marry him!”
Sylvia had so far been most decorous; but at this point her sense of fun was too much for her, and merriment broke out upon her countenance. “Mrs. Winthrop,” she declared, “there is but one way out—you must keep Mr. van Tuiver from proposing to me!”