“Are you still worried about that adventure?” Laura demanded.  “Dismiss it from your mind and let it be as if we had known each other for many years.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“To be sure I do,” promptly.  “I have stepped to the time of convention so much that a lapse once in a while is a positive luxury.  But Mrs. Coldfield had given me a guaranty before I addressed you, so the adventure was only a make-believe one after all.”

There never was a girl quite like this one.  He purloined a sidelong glance at her which embraced her wholly, from the chic gray cap on the top of her shapely head to the sensible little boots on her feet.  She wore a heavy, plaid coat, with deep pockets into which her hands were snugly buried; and she stood braced against the swell and the wind which was turning out strong and cold.  The rich pigment in the blood mantled her cheeks and in her eyes there was still a bit of captive sunshine.  He knew now that what had been only a possibility was an assured fact.  Never before had he cursed his father’s friends, but he did so now, silently and earnestly; for their pilfering fingers and their plausible lies had robbed his father’s son of a fine inheritance.  Money.  Never had he desired it so keenly.  A few weeks ago it had meant the wherewithal to pay his club-dues and to support a decent table when he traveled.  Now it was everything; for without it he never could dare lift his eyes seriously to this lovely picture so close to him, let alone dream of winning her.  He recalled Cathewe’s light warning about the bones of ducal hopes.  What earthly chance had he?  Unconsciously he shrugged.

“You are shrugging!” she cried, noting the expression; for, if he was secretly observing her, she was surreptitiously contemplating his own advantages.

“Did I shrug?”

“You certainly did.”

“Well,” candidly, “it was the thought of money that made me do it.”

“I detest it, too.”

“Good heavens, I didn’t say I detested it!  What I shrugged about was my own dreary lack of it.”

“Bachelors do not require much.”

“That’s true; but I no longer desire to remain a bachelor.”  The very thing that saved him was the added laughter, forced, miserably forced.  Fool!  The words had slipped without his thinking.

“Gracious!  That sounds horribly like a proposal.”  She beamed upon him merrily.

And his heart sank, for he had been earnest enough, for all his blunder.  Manlike, he did not grasp the fact that under the circumstance merriment was all she could offer him, if she would save him from his own stupidity.

“But I do hate money,” she reaffirmed.

“I shouldn’t.  Think of what it brings.”

“I do; begging letters, impostures, battle-scarred titles, humbugging shop-keepers, and perhaps one honest friend in a thousand.  And if I married a title, what equivalent would I get for my money, to put it brutally?  A chateau, which I should have to patch up, and tolerance from my husband’s noble friends.  Not an engaging prospect.”