第9章

Inwardly I laughed at the egotism of raw nerves that had conjured it up, even for an instant, as a reason for gratitude.The situation was not so peculiar, not so interesting, as that.But I answered his stare with a smile; what I had said might very well stand.

'Do you imagine,' he said, seeing that I did not mean to amplify it, 'that I want to marry her out of any sort of GOODness?'

'Benevolence is your weakness, Dacres.'

'I see.You think one's motive is to withdraw her from a relation which ought to be the most natural in the world, but which is, in her particular and painful case, the most equivocal.'

'Well, come,' I remonstrated.'You have dropped one or two things, you know, in the heat of your indignation, not badly calculated to give one that idea.The eloquent statement you have just made, for instance--it carries all the patness of old conviction.How often have you rehearsed it?'

I am a fairly long-suffering person, but I began to feel a little annoyed with my would-be son-in-law.If the relation were achieved it would give him no prescriptive right to bully me; and we were still in very early anticipation of that.

'Ah!' he said disarmingly.'Don't let us quarrel.I'm sorry you think that; because it isn't likely to bring your favour to my project, and I want you friendly and helpful.Oh, confound it!' he exclaimed, with sudden temper.'You ought to be.I don't understand this aloofness.I half suspect it's pose.You undervalue Cecily--well, you have no business to undervalue me.You know me better than anybody in the world.Now are you going to help me to marry your daughter?'

'I don't think so,' I said slowly, after a moment's silence, which he sat through like a mutinous schoolboy.'I might tell you that Idon't care a button whom you marry, but that would not be true.Ido care more or less.As you say, I know you pretty well.I'd a little rather you didn't make a mess of it; and if you must I should distinctly prefer not to have the spectacle under my nose for the rest of my life.I can't hinder you, but I won't help you.'

'And what possesses you to imagine that in marrying Cecily I should make a mess of it? Shouldn't your first consideration be whether SHE would?'

'Perhaps it should, but, you see, it isn't.Cecily would be happy with anybody who made her comfortable.You would ask a good deal more than that, you know.'