There was a pause. He sat staring at her in pitiful bewilderment. “I thought,” he said, “this was more serious.” And then he stopped, reading in her face that something was wrong. “Isn’t an offer of marriage more serious than one of friendship?” he inquired.
“More serious?” repeated Sylvia. “More important, you mean?”
“Exactly.”
“More attractive, that is?” she suggested.
“Why—yes.”
“In other words, Mr. van Tuiver, you thought that a man with so much money might be accepted as a husband when he’d been rejected as a friend?”
“Why—not exactly that, Miss Castleman——”
But Sylvia hardly heard his denial. A wave of annoyance, of disgust, had swept over her. She rose to her feet. “You have justified my worst opinion of you!” she exclaimed.
“What have I done?” he cried, miserably.
“It isn’t what you’ve done, as I’ve told you before—it’s what you are, Mr. van Tuiver. You are utterly, utterly impossible, and I’m furious with myself for having heard what you have just said to me.”