ONCE more father and daughter faced each other across the
breakfast table. This time, Augusta, with a very red face, stared
defiantly into bitter and contemptuous eyes.
“And your socialism? Do you expect to convert your Duke?”
“No, papa; of course not.”
“It is exactly five weeks since you informed me that you wished me to
devote my fortune to the dear people.”
“I know it, papa. One looks at things very differently when one looks
at them through a man’s eyes, as it were--I mean through the eyes of
the man one has fallen in love with; of course I always have had the
highest respect for your opinion. Now, it seems to me a grand thing to
restore the fortunes of an ancient and illustrious house----”
“That is the reason the good God permitted me to be born, I suppose--to
sacrifice some ten or fifteen years of man’s allotted span in
accumulating millions with which to prop up a rotten aristocracy.”
“Papa! I never knew you to be so bitter. You are quite unlike yourself
this morning. Of course, we don’t all look at things in the same way in
this world. But I don’t wish you to think that I have entirely forsaken
my old principles. I should do much good with my money in England. The
poverty is said to be frightful there; and I hear that the working-men
on the great estates only get a pound a week, and sometimes less. I
should pay those on our estates more, my self.”
“It doesn’t occur to you, I suppose, that American-made millions
should be spent in America, and that we have poverty enough of our own.”
“Our poor are mostly Europeans,” she retorted quickly.
He gave a brief laugh. “You have me there. Well; go on. You intend to
reform this poor little trembling sore-eyed weak-kneed, debauchee----”
“Father! I will not permit you to speak in that way of the Duke of
Bosworth.”
She had sprung from her chair. Like all phlegmatic natures, when the
depths were stirred she was violent and ugly. She looked as if about to
leap upon her parent and beat him.
He rose also and looked down on her. “You will not do what?” he said
with a cutting contempt. “Go upstairs to your room, and stay there
until I give you permission to leave it. And understand here, once for
all, that not one dollar of mine will ever go into that man’s pocket.
If he marries you, he will have to support you, or you him: I shall not
take the trouble to enquire which.”