Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/116

104 wife; only she mightn't now be able to bring him any thing like the marriage-portion of which he had begun by having the virtual promise. Mrs. Mulville let me know what was already said; she was charming, this American girl, but really these American fathers! What was a man to do? Mr. Saltram, according to Mrs. Mulville, was of opinion that a man was never to suffer his relation to money to become a spiritual relation, but was to keep it wholesomely mechanical. "Moi pas comprendre!" I commented on this; in rejoinder to which Adelaide, with her beautiful sympathy, explained that she supposed he simply meant that the thing was to use it, don't you know? but not to think too much about it. "To take it, but not to thank you for it?" I still more profanely enquired. For a quarter of an hour afterward she wouldn't look at me, but this didn't prevent my asking her what had been the result, that afternoon in the Regent's Park, of her taking our friend to see Miss Anvoy.

"Oh, so charming!" she answered, brightening. "He said he recognized in her a nature he could absolutely trust."

"Yes, but I'm speaking of the effect on herself."

Mrs. Mulville was silent an instant. "It was every thing one could wish."

Something in her tone made me laugh. "Do you mean she gave him something?"

"Well, since you ask me!"