“Did you sell it then?”
“No, indeed. I shall never sell it. My mother was born there and it was there she died.”
“Tell me of her,” Jenny murmured. “Are you like her?”
“No, they used to say not. I take after my father, I believe. He was a sailor, the captain of a merchantman, and was lost at sea. It was a terrible blow for my mother; she was left alone with but myself for consolation. It was that she used to call me, and I—I loved her with all my heart.”
“I would have loved her, too,” Jenny sighed.
“If she could hear you, do you know what she would say?—do you know, Jenny? She would say: ‘My dear child, I love you, too. I love you because you are sweet and good, because you are tenderhearted, because you are the loveliest, best and dearest girl in all the world, because you have filled my boy’s life with living springs, because you are the future to him, and hope and fame.’ That is what she would say to you, Jenny, and she would add, I know: ‘Love him, Jenny, for my sake if you cannot love him for his own.’ ”
“But I do love you,” said the young woman, with great decision. “Didn’t you know it?”
At this unexpected avowal Hugh stood very still, his brush in the air; then the brush fell, and suddenly he was at her side, an arm about the whiteness of her neck, his lips on hers.
“Here! Here! Stop that!”
The two culprits separated so quickly that neither were quite sure whether the kiss had been given or yet returned. Across the court, in the window opposite, Mr. Sisseton glowered, imposing and irate.
“Stop that, I say!” he repeated. “You have no right to do that. No right at all. As for you, young man, go back to your easel. Jenny, don’t you move until I am there.”
In their innocence, a thunderbolt from a clear sky could not have startled more. Jenny hid her face in her hands and Hugh bit his fingers. A minute passed, that seemed an hour long, then another, a third, a fourth; finally there came a shuffle in the hall and the old man entered, this time without the formality of a rap.
“Now, sir—” he began.
“Mr. Sisseton,” Hugh interrupted, “I swear to you it is the first time, and I swear to you, also, it would not have occurred if—if—”
“Well, sir, if what? If I hadn’t brought you together, perhaps. And do you suppose I didn’t do it on purpose?”
“What!”
“Precisely. Now will you be good enough to inform me what your intentions are?”
“My intentions are to marry your daughter, if she will do me the honor to become my wife.”
“Oh, they are, are they? And have you any reason to think that she will consent?”
“He knows that I will,” said that forward young woman.
“It’s come to that pass, has it?” muttered the tyrant. “Very good. Now, Mr. Hyrtl, perhaps you will answer a question. How do you propose to support her?”
Hugh’s answer was in the expression which he then assumed, one pathetic enough to have mollified a tiger. But Mr. Sisseton was either not to be mollified or else he demanded something more explicit than pantomime.
“Well, sir?” he growled.
“Well, sir,” Hugh at last made answer, “I am young, strong, ambitious, and it seems to me—”
“Fiddlesticks! So was I young, strong, ambitious, and it seemed to me that I was quite capable of supporting a wife on just those things for capital. The result was not satisfactory. I have had the experience, though, and on the day when my wife, outworn with privation and misery, died, I swore that my daughter should never marry a pauper.”
Hugh raised a hand in protest.
“Unless,” the old man continued, “unless my daughter happened to be an heiress.”
“Oh, papa, papa,” sobbed Jenny, “how can you be so cruel!”
Mr. Sisseton went to the door, opened it, peered out in the corridor, then closing it again, took a seat in the middle of the room and stared at Hugh as though he had never seen him before.
“What day of the month is it?” he asked, abruptly.
“Really—”
“Come now, a clever young fellow like you ought to tell me like a shot.”
“It’s the 10th,” said Hugh, morosely.
“The 10th of what?”
“The 10th of June,” sobbed Jenny.
“The 10th of June, is it?” the old man repeated, meditatively, “the 10th of June. Dear me, dear me, how time flies! Well, it being the 10th of June—You are quite sure, are you, that it is the 10th of June?”
“Yes, yes,” Hugh and Jenny answered in chorus.
“Well, it being the 10th of June, I may say, in confidence, of course, I may say that my daughter is an heiress.”
“An heiress!” the girl exclaimed.
“As if I cared,” said Hugh.
“Well, you might just as well care, then,” the old man retorted. “For if she were not, she would never be your wife. No, sir, never. However, in the circumstances, and in view of the fact that today is the 10th of June, I may congratulate you. Jenny will have eighty-seven thousand dollars.” And drawing from his pocket a package done up in oilskin, the old man displayed to the startled lovers a roll of banknotes of fabulous size.
“But where did you get them from?” Jenny gasped.
Up to this point the old man had conducted himself with the assurance and bravado of a stockbroker, but that simple little question seemed to have precisely the same effect on him that the prick of a pin has on a toy balloon. He collapsed.
“Why—why,” he stammered at last, “they belonged to your mother.”
“But only a moment ago
