"Then we can only part," said Earle, dropping her hand. "It is evident that the love of money is more deeply rooted in you than love of me. God forgive you, Marion, and God bring you to some sense of the relative value of things! I have the presumption to think that what I give you is worth a little more than the fortune which you rate so highly. Some day you may learn how little money can really buy of what is best worth having in human life. In that day you may remember this choice."
"I shall never regret it," she answered, proudly.
"I hope from my heart that you may not, but _I_ shall long regret it. For I believe that you have a noble nature, to which you are doing violence. And I hoped that in the life to which I would have taken you, that nobler nature would have conquered the one which finds so much attraction in mercenary things."
The nobler nature of which he spoke struggled a little to assert itself, but was overborne by the lower and stronger nature--by anger, disappointment, and wounded pride. What! she, who had expected to sway and dominate all with whom she came in contact, to yield to this man--to give up the strongest wish, the most earnest resolve of her life? From her early youth embittered by adversity and galled by poverty, she had said to herself, "Some day I will be rich!" And now the opportunity to possess riches, and with riches the power for which she longed, was placed within her reach, and yet was held back by the selfish obstinacy of a man, who made his refusal worse by condemning her wishes. At this moment she felt that anything was more possible than to yield to him.
"You are wasting words," she observed, coldly. "My attraction for mercenary things concerns you no longer. Our folly is at an end. It _was_ folly I see, for you have no trust in me, nor any inclination to please me; and where these things do not exist, love does not exist either."
She gave him no opportunity to reply had he intended to do so, for she left the room abruptly with the last words.
And there was no deliberation about her next step. She went at once to Mr. Singleton. "I have come to tell you that your confidence in my power over your nephew is misplaced," she said. "I have failed entirely to influence him. He is going away."