‘I don’t think you’d like to give it up, father.’

’Well, no.  It gives me exercise and something to do.  The women manage most of it down at the house; but there must be a change when Marie has gone.  I have hardly looked it in the face yet, but I know there must be a change.  She has grown up among it till she has it all at her fingers’ ends.  I tell you what, George, she is a girl in a hundred,—­a girl in a hundred.  She is going to marry a rich man, and so it don’t much signify; but if she married a poor man, she would be as good as a fortune to him.  She’d make a fortune for any man.  That’s my belief.  There is nothing she doesn’t know, and nothing she doesn’t understand.’

Why did his father tell him all this?  George thought of the day on which his father had, as he was accustomed to say to himself, turned him out of the house because he wanted to marry this girl who was ‘as good as a fortune’ to any man.  Had he, then, been imprudent in allowing himself to love such a girl?  Could there be any good reason why his father should have wished that a ‘fortune,’ in every way so desirable, should go out of the family?  ’She’ll have nothing to do of that sort if she goes to Basle,’ said George moodily.

‘That is more than you can say,’ replied his father.  ’A woman married to a man of business can always find her share in it if she pleases.  And with such a one as Adrian Urmand her side of the house will not be the least considerable.’

‘I suppose he is little better than a fool,’ said George.

’A fool!  He is not a fool at all.  If you were to see him buying, you would not call him a fool.  He is very far from a fool.’

‘It may be so.  I do not know much of him myself.’

’You should not be so prone to think men fools till you find them so; especially those who are to be so near to yourself.  No;—­he’s not a fool by any means.  But he will know that he has got a clever wife, and he will not be ashamed to make use of her.’

George was unwilling to contradict his father at the present moment, as he had all but made up his mind to tell the whole story about himself and Marie before he returned to the house.  He had not the slightest idea that by doing so he would be able to soften his father’s heart.  He was sure, on the contrary, that were he to do so, he and his father would go back to the hotel as enemies.  But he was quite resolved that the story should be told sooner or later,—­ should be told before the day fixed for the wedding.  If it was to be told by himself, what occasion could be so fitting as the present?  But, if it were to be done on this morning, it would be unwise to harass his father by any small previous contradictions.

They were now up among the scattered prostrate logs, and had again taken up the question of the business of wood-cutting.  ’No, George; it would never have done for you; not as a mainstay.  I thought of giving it up to you once, but I knew that it would make a poor man of you.’