The maid was dismissed. Paul stood on the hearthrug with bent brows, his hands in his jacket pockets. "I can't understand it," he said.
"She must ha' come straight from the Town Hall," said Barney Bill.
"But she wasn't there," cried Paul.
"Sonny," said the old fellow, "if you're always dead sure of where a woman is and where a woman isn't, you're a wiser man than Solomon with all his wives and other domestic afflictions."
Paul threw the card into the fire. "It doesn't matter where she was," said he. "It was a very polite—even a gracious act to send in her card on her way home. But it makes no difference to what I was talking about. What have I got to do with princesses? They're out of my sphere. So are Naiads and Dryads and Houris and Valkyrie and other fabulous ladies. The Princess Zobraska has nothing to do with the question."
He made a step towards Jane and, his hand on her shoulder, looked at her in his new, masterful way. "I come in the most solemn hour and in the crisis of my life to ask you to marry me. My father, whom I've only learned to love and revere to-night, is lying dead upstairs. To-night I have cut away all bridges behind me. I go into the unknown. We'll have to fight, but we'll fight together. You have courage, and I at least have that. There's a seat in Parliament which I'll have to fight for afterwards like a dog for a bone, and an official position which brings in enough bread and-butter—"
"And there's a fortune remarked Barney Bill.
"What do you mean?" Paul swung round sharply.
"Yer father's fortune, sonny. Who do yer suppose he was a-going to leave it to? 'Omes for lost 'orses or Free Zionists? I don't know as 'ow I oughter talk of it, him not buried yet—but I seed his will when he made it a month or two ago, and barring certain legacies to Free Zionists and such-like lunatic folk, not to speak of Jane ere being left comfortably off, you're the residuary legatee, sonny—with something like a hundred thousand pounds. There's no talk of earning bread-and-butter, sonny."
"It never entered my head," said Paul, rather dazed. "I suppose a father would leave his money to his son. I didn't realize it." He passed his hand over his eyes. "So many things have happened to-night. Anyhow," he said, smiling queerly, in his effort to still a whirling brain, "if there are no anxieties as to ways and means, so much the better for Jane and me. I am all the more justified in asking you to marry me. Will you?"