"No, Mr. Kenion, the man who marries my daughter with my consent must first prove to me that he is worthy of her."
"But of course as to that—well, Enid tells me she is over twenty-one."
"Oh, yes. I see what you mean. A man might marry her without my consent. But then he would get her—and not one penny with her.... That, Mr. Kenion, is quite final."
He seemed staggered by the downright weight of this final statement.
"Of course," he said, rather feebly, "we are desperately in love with one another."
Contempt flashed from her eyes as she asked him still another question or two.
"What did you expect—that I should welcome your proposal and thank you for it?"
"Well, Enid and I had made up our minds that you wouldn't thwart her wishes."
"But, Mr. Kenion, even if I had agreed and made everything easy and pleasant for you, surely you would not be content to live as a pensioner for the rest of your days?"
She was thinking of what Dick Marsden had said to her in the dusk by the river. "I could not pose as the pensioner of a rich wife." It seemed to her a natural and yet a noble sentiment; and she contrasted the proper manly frame of mind that found expression in such an utterance with the mean-spirited readiness to depend on others that Mr. Kenion confessed so shamelessly. Marsden was perhaps not a gentleman in the snobbish, conventional sense, but how much more a man than this Kenion!