"Stuff!" said Preston. "That convent-place has a high reputation for the way it's conducted. Also, any man of forty can steal a girl from any boy of twenty if he only cares to try. The only trouble is that he hardly ever cares enough about it to try."
"Fifty,--granted," continued Preston. "Where we're lucky is that this fellow seems to want to try--supposing there is any other chap, and of course there isn't."
"Do you think, Preston"--Ethel's eyes were downcast--"that she can learn to love him?"
"But, dear," Ethel insisted, "it does seem a little as if this were the sort of thing that a girl ought to be left to decide for herself."
Newberry had risen and gone to the mantelpiece to seek a fresh cigarette. His wife's words brought him to a stop. He folded his thin arms across his chest.
"Look here," he said; "we have got to face this thing right now, and once and for all. What are the facts in the case? The facts are these: Here's Muriel with a pretty face and a good, sound, sensible education of the proper homely sort, which includes a healthy ignorance of this wicked world. And here's this fellow Stainsfield, or Stainborough, or whatever his name is, and I'm sure it makes no difference, a strong, fatherly kind of old dodo, comes to New York, 'b'gosh,' with his eyes bugging out at the first good-looker they light on. Well, he's not the Steel Trust, or a Transatlantic steamship combination, but he's what, until our palates were spoiled twenty years or so ago, we'd have called a confoundedly rich man. Understand? Then add to it that Muriel hasn't a cent of her own and no prospects--_no prospects_, mind you. And now see whether you'd not better forget to talk sentiment and begin to get busy. If you and Muriel don't get busy, it's a hundred-to-one shot some other girl will--and'll get him damned quick. Then Muriel will probably be left to get a job as school-teacher or something-or-other nearly as bad. He's worth a half-million if he's worth a cent."
Ethel Newberry's large, innocent eyes opened wide. If surprise can be placid, they were placidly surprised.
"Are you quite sure about the money, dear?" she asked.
Among the little company of persons aware of Jim Stainton's sentimental inclinations, or so far as were concerned the people most intimately affected by those inclinations, there appeared, thus far, to be a singular unanimity of opinion regarding the matter. Stainton, it is to be supposed, approved because the inclinations concurred with his pet theories. Newberry, although he did not know anything about Stainton's pet theories and would in all probability have jeered at them had he been enlightened, proved ready to welcome the miner because he had decided that the miner should relieve the Newberry household of a quiet presence that, its quiescence to the contrary notwithstanding, distinctly disturbed the even course of Newberry's existence. Ethel, as may be readily believed, found, under her husband's expert guidance, no difficulty in reaching the conclusion that, as she put it, "a match of this sort would be for the child's best interests."