Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/275



“ dear,” said Jane Warburton, days later, “you are as platitudinously impressive as a Bishop!”

“A remark,” rejoined the financier, “which lacks in reverence both to the church and to myself.”

“Jane,” he said after a pause and, rather, as if the admission hurt him, “you are my only child, and I love you.”

“You don't exactly show it, dad!” came the quick reply.

“I show it in my own way.”

“Your own way is to …”

“To stop you from doing a foolish thing which you'd regret sooner or later.”

“One never regrets love, dad!”

“One does, too!”

And, for the tenth time, Mr. Warburton reiterated his objections to the marriage of his daughter and Hector Wade.

Mr. Ezra Warburton was a manly man—what is called so in lieu of a better term—who had always been in the habit of considering his daughter's sex as rather an indelicate intrusion into his business life—which was his whole life. Of course he loved her,