“I am very glad, sir, of the opportunity,” Gervase said; and he made his statement, as he had already made it to Madeline, Mr Thursley listening without interrupting by a word the concise report. When the young man had ended, there was a brief pause.
“What you have to tell me,” said Mr Thursley at length, “is that you want to marry my daughter, a girl accustomed to every luxury; but that having wasted every penny you had, against my advice, in a quixotic and quite unnecessary act, you have now nothing, absolutely nothing----”
“Except the house and its contents, which means----”
“Three or four thousand pounds at the outside--perhaps not so much, making a forced sale, as you will have to do. Is Madeline to live and have a proper maintenance provided for her on the interest, say, of four thousand pounds?”
“I am in your hands, sir,” said Gervase. “No such danger as this seemed possible at the time when we first loved each other. Had I been a poor man then, I should not have presumed to ask Madeline to share my fate. Things have gone against me, without any fault of mine, and now----” He made a momentary pause. Madeline, leaning forward, put her hand upon his. He clasped it tight, and continued, in a more vigorous voice: “The only thing that has not changed is our love for each other,--and nothing can change that.”
There are few things more irritating than those signs of mutual agreement between two who are on the other side from that occupied by the judicial authority. Mr Thursley was warmly moved by this irritation and annoyance. He was left alone in his dignity, while these two conspired against him. He said, with an accent of contempt, made acrid by his daughter’s mute adhesion to the foe, “Without any fault of yours!--entirely by your fault, I should say; because, in the first place, you deserted your father; and in the second, because you refused to take my advice,--because your sense of honour, forsooth--and honesty I think you called it--was more keen than mine. Honour, to my thinking,” said Mr Thursley, with lowering brows, “should keep a man even from contemplating the idea of living on his wife’s money, having none of his own.”
Hot words were on Gervase’s lips, but Madeline gave a hasty pressure to his hand, and he made no reply.