“I mean it!  I mean it!  If he had lived he would have settled it on me easy enough when he saw what I was doing for the family.  Two million if need be!  He was the one in this family that made it big, because he wasn’t afraid of big things.”

Further rage trembled along Mrs. Meyerburg’s voice, and the fingers she waggled trembled, too, of that same wrath.  “You’m a bad girl, Becky!  You’m a bad girl with thought only for yourself.  Always your papa said by each child we should do the same.  Five hundred thousand dollars to each son when he marries a fine, good girl.  More as one night I can tell you I laid awake when Felix picked out for himself Trixie, just wondering what papa would want I should do it or not.”

“Can’t you keep from picking on that girl, mamma?  It’s through her, if you want to know it, that I first got in with—­with the marquis and that crowd.”

“Always by each child we should do the same, he said.  Five hundred thousand dollars to our girl when she marries a fine, good man.  Even back in days when he had not a cent to leave after him, always he said alike you should all be treated.  Always, you hear?  Always.”

Fire had dried the tears in Mrs. Meyerburg’s eyes and her face had resumed its fixity of lines.  Only her finger continued to tremble and two near-the-surface nerves in her left temple.

“But, mamma, you know yourself he never dreamt we could climb up to this.  That for a miserable five hundred thousand more we—­”

“A miserable five hundred thousand she calls it like it was five hundred thousand cents!”

“That for a miserable five hundred thousand dollars we could raise our family up to the nobility.  The Marquis Rosencrantz, ma, who—­”

“Becky, it ain’t that I got a word to say against this young man Rosencrantz—­but—­”

“Marquis Rosencrantz, mamma.”

“All right then, Marquis Rosencrantz; but it’s like your brother Ben says—­a marquis in a country where there ain’t no more any of them made could just as well be called a mister.  Not a word I got to say against this young Rosencrantz, but—­”

“Marquis, ma, please remember!  M-a-r-q-u-i-s.  Whether there are any more of them or not in France, he still goes by the title over here, and that’s what he is, ma.  Please remember!”

“Marquis Rosencrantz.  But when a young man, Becky, don’t talk my own language, it ain’t so easy for me to know if I like him—­”

“Like him.  Huh!” Sitting there upright in bed, her large, white arms wrapped about her knees, Miss Meyerburg regarded her mother with dry eyes, but through a blur of scorn.  “She don’t know if she likes him!  Let me tell you, ma, we can worry if he likes us, not if we like him.”

“I always say, Becky, about these fine people what you meet traveling in Europe with your brother Felix and his wife with her gay ways, you—­”

“A marquis comes her way and she don’t know whether she likes him or not.  That’s rich!”