and you're going to help me.'
'No,' answered Lady Maud quietly; 'I won't help you to break off that engagement. But if it should come to nothing, without your interfering—that is, by the girl's own free will and choice and change of mind, I'd help you to marry her if I could.'
'But you admit that she's going to be miserable,' said Van Torp stubbornly.
'I'm sorry for her, but it's none of my business. It's not honourable to try and make trouble between engaged people, no matter how ill-matched they may be.'
'Funny idea of honour,' observed the American, 'that you're bound to let a friend of yours break her neck at the very gravel pit where you were nearly smashed yourself! In the hunting field you'd grab her bridle if she wouldn't listen to you, but in a matter of marriage—oh, no! "It's dishonourable to interfere," "She's made her choice and she must abide by it," and all that kind of stuff!'
Lady Maud's clear eyes met his angry blue ones calmly.
'I don't like you when you say such things,' she said, lowering her voice a little.
'I didn't mean to be rude,' answered the millionaire, almost humbly. 'You see I don't always know. I {63} learnt things differently from what you did. I suppose you'd think it an insult if I said I'd give a large sum of money to your charity the day I married Madame Cordova, if you'd help me through.'
{63}
"'Funny idea of honour,' observed the American."
'Please stop.' Lady Maud's face darkened visibly. 'That's not like you.'
'I'll give a million pounds sterling,' said Mr. Van Torp slowly.
Lady Maud leaned back in her corner of the sofa, clasping her hands rather tightly together in her lap. Her white throat flushed as when the light of dawn kisses Parian marble, and the fresh tint in her cheeks deepened softly; her lips were tightly shut, her eyelids quivered a little, and she looked straight before her across the room.
'You can do a pretty good deal with a million pounds,' said Mr. Van Torp, after the silence had lasted nearly half a minute.
'Don't!' cried Lady Maud, in an odd voice.
'Forty thousand pounds a year,' observed the
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