Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/450

 She only looked at him wistfully and her eyes seemed to be dreaming.

"I want you to have some pride. Gaston has attempted to kick me out of the councils of the party, and become the dictator of the state. His course is one of violence and radicalism. I regard him as a dangerous man, and I want you to have nothing to do with him."

She was gravely silent.

"Do you believe he has been faithfully dreaming of you in your absence?" asked the General.

"Yes, I do!"

"Then let me disabuse your mind. It is not the way of strong men. He is absolutely absorbed in a desperate political struggle in which his personal ambition's are first. I have seen him paying the most devoted attentions to the daughter of our rival down east, whose influence he wants, and it is rumoured among his friends that he has proposed to her."

"Who told you that?" she asked impetuously.

"I had it first from Allan, but I've heard it since from others."

"I do not believe a word of it," she declared.

"That's because you're a woman and hold such silly ideals. I tell you, he wants you only because he knows you are rich, and he wishes to brow-beat me. Such a man will try to whip you before you have been his wife five years. I know that kind of man. Why can't you trust my judgment?"

"I had rather trust my heart's intuitions, Papa, I can not be deceived in such a question."

"Well, you are being deceived. He is anything but a languishing lover. At present he is a political tiger at bay. Unless you hold him to you by some pledge he has given, he will forget you, and marry another in two years. I am a man and I know men. I thought I was desperately