“Thank Heaven for that!” he said with the old whimsical look.  “If you did you would think meanly of me ever after.  Yes, that is why, Mary Ann.  I am a selfish brute—­selfish to the last beat of my heart, to the inmost essence of my every thought.  Beethoven is worth two of me, aren’t you, Beethoven?” The spaniel, thinking himself called, trotted over.  “He never calculates—­he just comes and licks my hand—­don’t look at me as if I were mad, Mary Ann.  You don’t understand me—­thank Heaven again.  Come now!  Does it never strike you that if I were to marry you now, it would be only for your two and a half million dollars?”

“No, sir,” faltered Mary Ann.

“I thought not,” he said triumphantly.  “No, you will always remain a fool, I am afraid, Mary Ann.”

She met his contempt with an audacious glance.

“But I know it wouldn’t be for that, Mr. Lancelot.”

“No, no, of course it wouldn’t be, not now.  But it ought to strike you just the same.  It doesn’t make you less a fool, Mary Ann.  There!  There!  I don’t mean to be unkind, and, as I think I told you once before, it’s not so very dreadful to be a fool.  A rogue is a worse thing, Mary Ann.  All I want to do is to open your eyes.  Two and a half million dollars are an awful lot of money—­a terrible lot of money.  Do you know how long it will be before I make two million dollars, Mary Ann?”

“No, sir.”  She looked at him wonderingly.

“Two million years.  Yes, my child, I can tell you now.  You thought I was rich and grand, I know, but all the while I was nearly a beggar.  Perhaps you thought I was playing the piano—­yes, and teaching Rosie—­for my amusement; perhaps you thought I sat up writing half the night out of—­sleeplessness,” he smiled at the phrase, “or a wanton desire to burn Mrs. Leadbatter’s gas.  No, Mary Ann, I have to get my own living by hard work—­by good work if I can, by bad work if I must—­but always by hard work.  While you will have fifteen thousand pounds a year, I shall be glad, overjoyed, to get fifteen hundred.  And while I shall be grinding away body and soul for my fifteen hundred, your fifteen thousand will drop into your pockets, even if you keep your hands there all day.  Don’t look so sad, Mary Ann.  I’m not blaming you.  It’s not your fault in the least.  It’s only one of the many jokes of existence.  The only reason I want to drive this into your head is to put you on your guard.  Though I don’t think myself good enough to marry you, there are lots of men who will think they are ... though they don’t know you.  It is you, not me, who are grand and rich, Mary Ann ... beware of men like me—­poor and selfish.  And when you do marry—­”

“Oh, Mr. Lancelot!” cried Mary Ann, bursting into tears at last, “why do you talk like that?  You know I shall never marry anybody else.”

“Hush, hush!  Mary Ann!  I thought you were going to be a good girl and never cry again.  Dry your eyes now, will you?”