“In fact, you are conferring a great honor on my family by condescending to marry into it?”
“I dont understand that way of looking at things, Mr. Lind; and so I leave you to settle the question of honor as you please. But you must not condemn me for putting my position in the best possible light in order to reconcile you to an inevitable fact.”
“What do you mean by an inevitable fact, sir?”
“My marriage, of course. I assure you that it will take place.”
“But I shall not permit it to take place. Do you think to ignore me in the matter?”
“Practically so. If you give your consent, I shall be glad for the sake of Marian, who will be gratified by it. But if you withhold it, we must dispense with it. By opposing us, you will simply — by making Marian’s home unbearable to her — precipitate the wedding.” Conolly, under the influence of having put the case neatly, here relaxed his manner so far as to rest his elbows on the table and look pleasantly at his visitor.
“Do you know to whom you are speaking?” said Mr. Lind, driven by rage and a growing fear of defeat into desperate self-assertion.
“I am speaking,” said Conolly with a smile, “to my future father-in-law.”
“I am a director of this company, of which you are the servant, as you shall find to your cost if you persist in holding insulting language to me.”
“If I found any director of this company allowing other than strictly business considerations to influence him at the Board, I should insist on his resigning.”
Mr. Lind looked at him severely, then indignantly, then unsteadily, without moving him in the least. At last he said, more humbly: “I hope you will not abuse your position, Mr. Conolly. I do not know whether you have sufficient influence over Marian to induce her to defy me; but however that may be, I appeal to your better feelings. Put yourself in my place. If you had an only daughter — —”
“Excuse my interrupting you,” said Conolly, gently; “but that will not advance the argument unless you put yourself in mine. Besides, I am pledged to Marian. If she asks me to break off the match, I shall release her instantly.”
“You will bind yourself to do that?”
“I cannot help myself. I have no more power to make her marry me than you have to prevent her.”
“I have the authority of a parent. And I must tell you, Mr. Conolly, that it will be my duty to enlighten my poor child as to the effect a union with you must have on her social position. You have made the most of your celebrity and your prospects. She may be dazzled for the moment; but her good sense will come to the rescue yet, I am convinced.”
“I have certainly spared no pains to persuade her. Unless the habit of her childhood can induce Marian to defer to your prejudice — you must allow me to call it so: it is really nothing more — she will keep her word to me.”
Mr. Lind winced, recollecting how little his conduct toward Marian during her childhood was calculated to accustom her to his influence. “It seems to me, sir,” he said, suddenly thinking of a new form of reproach, “that, to use your own plain language, you are nothing more or less than a Radical.”
“Radicalism is not considered a reproach amongst workmen,” said Conolly.
“I shall not fail to let her know the confidence with which you boast of your power over her.”
“I have simply tried to be candid with you. You know exactly how I stand. If I have omitted anything, ask me, and I will tell you at once.”
Mr. Kind rose. “I know quite as much as I care to know,” he said. “I distinctly object to and protest against all your proceedings, Mr. Conolly. If my daughter marries you, she shall have neither my countenance in society nor one solitary farthing of the fortune I had destined for her. I recommend the latter point to your attention.”
“I have considered it carefully, Mr. Lind; and I am satisfied with what she possesses in her own right.”
“Oh! You have ascertained that, have you?”
“I should hardly have proposed to marry her but for her entire pecuniary independence of me.”
“Indeed. And have you explained to her that you wish to marry her for the sake of securing her income?”
“I have explained to her everything she ought to know, taking care, of course, to have full credit for my frankness.”
Mr. Lind, after regarding him with amazement for a moment, walked to the door.
“I am a gentleman,” he said, pausing there for a moment, “and too oldfashioned to discuss the obligations of good breeding with a Radical. If I had believed you capable of the cynical impudence with which you have just met my remonstrances, I should have spared myself this meeting. Good-morning.”
“Good-morning,” said Conolly, gravely. When the door closed, he sprang up and walked to and fro, chuckling, rubbing his hands, and occasionally uttering a short laugh. When he had sufficiently relieved himself by this exercise, he sat down at his desk, and wrote a note.
”The Conolly Electro-Motor Company of London, Limited. Queen
Victoria Street, E.C.
“This is to let your ever-radiant ladyship know that I am fresh from an encounter with your father, who has retired in great wrath, defeated, but of opinion that he deserved no better for arguing with a Radical. I thought it better to put forth my strength at once so as to save future trouble. I send this post haste in order that you may be warned in case he should go straight home and scold you. I hope he will not annoy you much. — E.C.”
Having despatched the office boy to Westbourne Terrace with this letter, Conolly went off to lunch. Mr. Lind went back to his club, and then to Westbourne Terrace, where he was informed that the young ladies were together in the drawingroom. Some minutes later, Marian, discussing Conolly’s letter with Elinor, was interrupted by a servant, who informed her that her father desired to see her in his study.
“Now for it, Marian!” said Nelly, when the servant was gone. “Remember that you have to meet the most unreasonable of adversaries, a parent asserting his proprietary rights in his child. Dont be sentimental. Leave that to him: he will be full of a father’s anguish on discovering that his cherished daughter has feelings and interests of her own. Besides, Conolly has crushed him; and he will try to crush you in revenge.”
“I wish I were not so nervous,” said Marian. “I am not really afraid, but for all that, my heart is beating very unpleasantly.”
“I wish I were in your place,” said Elinor. “I feel like a charger at the sound of the trumpet.”
“I am glad, for poor papa’s sake, that you are not,” said Marian, going out.
She knocked at the study door; and her father’s voice, as he bade her come in, impressed her more than ever before. He was seated behind the writing-table, in front of which a chair was set for his daughter. She, unaccustomed from her childhood to submit to any constraint but that which the position of a guest, which she so often occupied, had trained her to impose on herself, was rather roused than awed by this magisterial arrangement. She sat down with less than her usual grace of manner, and looked at him with her brows knitted. It was one of the rare moments in which she reminded him of her mother. An angry impulse to bid her not dare look so at him almost got the better of him. However, he began prudently with a carefully premeditated speech.
“It is my duty, Marian,” he said gravely, “to speak of the statement you made last night. We need not allude to the painful scene which