"Well, if I put a question which may seem to you unwarranted, I want you to understand that there is grave reason for it. The question is this. Is there any understanding between yourself and Miss Mynors?"
Gerald flushed, a slow, dark flush, as he seated himself near his father, his eyes on the ground. "No," he said quietly, "not as yet."
"Ha!" The shrewd, kindly eyes above the rims of the reading-glasses were fixed upon him. "That means that you might--eh, Gerald?"
The younger man did not at once reply. He seemed to be weighing carefully the thing he wished to say. At last:
"I am not a fool, father," he began, "and I have ambition, or I should be no son of yours. I should prefer to make a marriage which would establish me socially." Embarrassment made his phrasing somewhat stilted. "You will remember that when I first saw Miss Mynors, she was the daughter of a man with a county position. One assumed the adequate rent-roll that went with it."
There was a pause. "She is far the most beautiful girl I ever saw," said Gerald at length.
"Yes, it is so. Her birth being undeniable, and her beauty so great, I have been wondering whether--whether anything else that is within my reach could ever be as well worth having--could ever compensate me for her loss."
"In short, my able, intellectual son is preparing to consider the world well lost for love--eh?"
"I think, father, you will admit the temptation to do so in this case."
"I do," was the answer, in tones abrupt but heartfelt. "I don't mind owning that, during the past fortnight, while seeing whither you were drifting, I have been half-inclined to drift also in that direction. But, my boy, it won't do." He laid his clenched hand heavily on the desk before him. "I tell you plainly that it won't do. The girl is beautiful, I don't deny it. But she comes of a bad stock. Her mother is a woman whom I should describe as having no moral sense. They are beggars. You would have bound upon your back, for the term of your natural life, a ready-made family of three, none of whom, I dare swear, will ever earn a farthing as long as they live. Just run your eye over that."
With a sudden twisting gesture he pushed a note, on lavender paper with a tiny, narrow black border, and scented with orris root, towards where his son sat. Gerald read: