“She was always glad to see me,” said poor Rothsay. “We constantly talked of you. She spoke of your kindness so prettily and so gratefully. Oh, Lepel, it is not her beauty only that has won my heart! Her nature is the nature of an angel.”
His voice failed him. For the first time in my remembrance of our long companionship, he burst into tears.
I was so shocked and distressed that I had the greatest difficulty in preserving my own self-control. In the effort to comfort him, I asked if he had ventured to confide in his father.
“You are the favorite son,” I reminded him. “Is there no gleam of hope in the future?”
He had written to his father. In silence he gave me the letter in reply.
It was expressed with a moderation which I had hardly dared to expect. Mr. Rothsay the elder admitted that he had himself married for love, and that his wife’s rank in the social scale (although higher than Susan’s) had not been equal to his own.
“In such a family as ours,” he wrote—perhaps with pardonable pride—“we raise our wives to our own degree. But this young person labors under a double disadvantage. She is obscure, and she is poor. What have you to offer her? Nothing. And what have I to give you? Nothing.”
This meant, as I interpreted it, that the main obstacle in the way was Susan’s poverty. And I was rich! In the excitement that possessed me, I followed the impulse of the moment headlong, like a child.
“While you were away from me,” I said to Rothsay, “did you never once think of your old friend? Must I remind you that I can make Susan your wife with one stroke of my pen?” He looked at me in silent surprise. I took my check-book from the drawer of the table, and placed the inkstand within reach. “Susan’s marriage portion,” I said, “is a matter of a line of writing, with my name at the end of it.”
He burst out with an exclamation that stopped me, just as my pen touched the paper.