He replied in the affirmative.
"Can you live—excuse the question—with her without dowry?"
He replied in the affirmative again.
"Then," I said, "though it may sound oddly from one of my cloth, you must either elope with her——"
"But then M. Raymond?—But his family?"
"He must suffer for his folly; not you. And you are only going to marry one daughter, not all of them. The other alternative is—you must pay Raymond's acceptance, as he cannot."
"It would be ruin. I cannot, either," he replied.
"Then you must lose Esther."
"I will not. No. And yet if I was to shoot Gray——"
"Shoot?" I interrupted, with the virtuous horror of a man who has never been tempted to fight a duel—"and would you then outrage the laws of divine and human?"