"Then I should like to ask if you have counted the cost. Assuming that this young man's intentions are unmercenary--and I doubt that very much--it isn't possible that there can be anything in common between you. The social world in which you move, and that to which he belongs, are as widely separated as the poles. I do not say yours is the higher plane, or his the lower--though I may have my own opinion as to that--but I do say they are vastly different; and the woman who knowingly marries out of her class has much to answer for. Admitting that you will do no worse than this, how can you hope to find anything congenial in a man who has absolutely nothing to say for himself at an ordinary family dinner-table?" "I'm not at all sure that Mr. Brockway hadn't anything to say for himself, though he couldn't be expected to know or care much about the things we talked of. And it occurred to me at the time that it wasn't quite kind in us to talk intellectual shop from the soup to the dessert, as we did." The President smiled, but the cold eyes belied the outward manifestation of kindliness. "You may thank me for that, if you choose," he went on, in the same calm argumentative tone. "I wanted to point a moral, and if I didn't succeed, it wasn't the fault of the subject. But that is only the social side; a question of taste. Unfortunately, there is a more serious matter to be considered. You know the terms of your granduncle's will; that your Cousin Fleetwell's half of the estate became his unconditionally on his coming of age, and that your portion is only a trust until your marriage with your cousin?" "I ought to know; it's been talked of enough." "And you know that if the marriage fail by your act, you will lose this legacy?" "Yes." "And that it will go to certain charitable institutions, and so be lost, not only to you, but to the family?" "I know all about it." "You know it, and yet you would deliberately throw yourself away on a fortune-hunting mechanic--a man whom you have known only since yesterday? It's incredible!" "It is you who have said it--not I," she retorted; "but I'm not willing to admit that it would be all loss and no gain. There would at least be a brand-new set of sensations, and I'm very sure they wouldn't all be painful." It was rebellion, pure and simple, and for once in his life Francis Vennor gave place to wrath--plebeian wrath, vociferous and undignified. "Shame on you!" he cried; "you are a disgrace to the name--it's the blood of that cursed socialist on your mother's side. Sit still and listen to me--" Gertrude, knowing her own temper, was about to run away--"If you marry that infernal upstart, you'll do it at your own expense, do you hear? You sha'n't finger a penny of my money as long as I can keep you out of it. Do you understand?"