‘What would you do?’ Jerrie asked, in a tone of smothered excitement.

‘I believe I’d kill her,’ Tom said, laughingly, ’or marry her, if I had not already seen you.  But don’t worry about that.  There is no child; there is nothing between us and a million, and you have only to appoint the day which will make me the happiest of men, and free you from a drudgery, which just to think of sets my teeth on edge.  Will you name the day, Jerrie?’

If it had been possible for a look to have annihilated Tom, the scorn which blazed in Jerrie’s eyes would have done so.  To hear him talk as if the matter were settled and the money he was to inherit from his uncle could buy her made her blood boil, and seizing her poor parasol, still standing up so straight in the piny sand, she stepped backward from him and said, in a mocking voice: 

’Thank you, Tom, for the honor you would confer upon me, and which I must decline, for I would rather wash grandma’s stockings all my life, and Harold’s overalls, too, than marry a man for money.’

‘Jerrie, oh, Jerrie, you don’t mean it!  You do not refuse me!’ Tom cried, in alarm, stretching out his arm to reach her but touching only the parasol, to which he clung desperately as a drowning man to a straw.

‘I do mean it, Tom,’ she said, softened a little by the pain she saw in his face.  ‘I can never be your wife.’

‘But why not!’ Tom demanded.  ’Many a girl who stands higher socially in the world than you would gladly bear my name.  I might have married Governor Storey’s daughter, at Saratoga, last summer.  She threw herself at my head, but one thought of you was enough to keep me from her.  You cannot be in earnest.’

’But I am.  I care nothing for your money, which may or may not be yours.  I do not love you, Tom; and without love I would not marry a prince.’

It was very hard for Tom to believe that Jerrie really meant to refuse him, Tom Tracy, who with all his love for her—­and he did love her as well as he was capable of loving any one—­still felt that he was stooping a little, or at least was honoring her greatly when he asked her to be his wife.  And she had refused him, and kept on refusing him in spite of all he could say; and worse than all, made him feel at last that she did not consider it an honor to be Mrs. Tom Tracy, of Tracy Park, and did not care either for him or his prospective fortune.  She called it that finally, then Tom grew angry and taunted her with fostering a hope that Arthur might make her his heir, or at least leave her some portion of his money.

’But I tell you he can’t do it.  A crazy man’s will would never stand, and he is crazy and you know it.  You will never touch a dollar of Uncle Arthur’s money, if you live to be a hundred, unless it comes to you from me.  Don’t flatter yourself that you will, and don’t flatter yourself either that you will ever catch Hal Hastings, who is the real obstacle in my way.  I know that very well, and so do you; but let me tell you that what heart he has is given to Maude, who is silly enough to encourage him; though I doubt if she would ever marry him when it comes to that.  She will look higher than a painter, a carpenter, a—­’