“And it was kind of you, Bayard, too--meeting the ladies on that tug. I was most agreeably surprised. I was wishing yesterday--in fact, it occurred to me what a comfort some young fellow would have been whom I could have sent down, all those anxious days. But we never had a son. Pray sit down, Mr. Bayard.... I am just reading the opinions of Olshausen on a most interesting point. I have collected valuable material in Berlin. I shall be glad to talk it over with you. I found Professor Kammelschkreiter a truly scholarly man. His views on the errors in the Revised Version are the most instructed of any I have met.” “Professor,” said Bayard stoutly, “will you pardon me if I interrupt you for a minute? I have come on a most important matter. I am sorry to seem uncivil, but the fact is I--I cannot wait another moment, sir.... Sir, I have the honor to tell you that your daughter has consented to become my wife.” At this truly American declaration, the Professor of Theology laid down his copy of Olshausen, and stared at the heretic missionary. “_My_ daughter!” he gasped, “_your_ wife?--I beg your pardon,” he added, when he saw the expression of Bayard’s face. “But you have taken me altogether by surprise. I may say that such a possibility has never--no, never once so much as occurred to me.” “I have loved her,” said Bayard tenaciously, “for three years. I have never been able to ask her to marry me till now. I think perhaps my uncle meant to make it possible for me to do so, but I do not know. I am still a poor man, sir, but I can keep her from suffering. She does me the undeserved honor to love me, and she asked me to tell you so.” The Professor had risen and was pacing the study hotly. His face was rigid. He waved his thin, long fingers impatiently at Bayard’s words. “Scholars do not dwell upon paltry, pecuniary facts like parents in lower circles of society!” cried the Professor with superbly unconscious hauteur. “There would have lacked nothing to my daughter’s comfort, sir, in any event--if the right man had wooed her. I was not the father to refuse him mere pecuniary aid to Helen’s happiness.” “And I was not the lover to ask for it,” observed Bayard proudly. “Hum--m--m,” said the Professor. He stopped his walk across the study floor, and looked at Bayard with troubled respect. “I will not take her from you at once,” urged Bayard gently; “we will wait till fall--if I can. She has said that she will become my wife, then.” His voice sank. He spoke the last words with a delicate reverence which would have touched a ruder father than the Professor of Theology. “Bayard,” he said brokenly, “you always were my favorite student. I couldn’t help it. I always felt a certain tenderness for you. I respect your intellectual traits, and your spiritual quality. Poverty, sir? What is _poverty_? But, Bayard, _you are not sound_!”