Page:Watch and Ward (Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878).djvu/166

Rh nothing to her imagination. Circumstances are fatally against it. If she falls in love, it will be with a man as unlike me as possible. Nevertheless, I do hope she may, without pain, learn to think of me as a husband. I hope," he cried, with appealing eyes, "that she may see a certain rough propriety in it. After all, who can make her such a husband as I? I am neither handsome, nor clever, nor accomplished, nor celebrated. She might choose from a dozen men who are. Pretty lovers doubtless they would make; but, my friend, it 's the husband, the husband, that is the test!" And he beat his clenched hand on his knee. "Do they know her, have they watched her, as I have done? What are their months to my years, their vows to my acts? Mrs. Keith!"—and he grasped her hand as if to call her to witness,—"I undertake to make her happy. I know what you can say,—that a woman's happiness is worth nothing unless imagination lends a hand. Well, even as a lover, perhaps I am not a hopeless case! And then, I confess, other things being equal, I would rather Nora should not marry a poor man."

Mrs. Keith spoke, on this hint. "You are a rich one, then?"

Roger folded up his pocket-handkerchief and patted it out on his knee, with pregnant hesitation. "Yes, I am rich,—I may call it so. I am rich!" he repeated with unction. "I can say it at last." He paused a moment, and then, with unstudied irony,—"I was not altogether a pauper when you refused me. Since then, for the last six years, I have been saving and sparing and counting. My purpose has sharpened my wits, and fortune, too, has favored me. I have speculated a little, I