"Will!--found!--stuff and nonsense! Do you think the man who murdered your uncle for the sole purpose of stealing it is going to emerge from his hiding and make you a present of it? Don't be a fool, sir! Go and ask Dundas to give you a leg up, and try and do something to earn a pound a week. As to Hilda, put her out of your head." By this time Gerald was almost beside himself. "Mind your own business, Marsh," he shouted, jumping up. "I will not touch a penny of Dundas' money. But how I make my living, and what I decide to do, has nothing to do with you." "Right! it hasn't. If I gave my consent to your marrying Hilda, it would have; as I decline to let my child throw herself away on a pauper, it hasn't. The best thing you can do is to quit this house and try and preserve your few scattered wits." "You are beastly rude. But allow me to say that before I go I must hear what Hilda says," and with a very dogged look upon his face Master Gerald sat down. "You will find that although Hilda has lapsed so far as to engage herself to you, she has still sufficient regard for the wishes of those in authority over her to obey them." The doctor was becoming classic again. "However, you shall see her." Again Gerald cast an ironical glance round the room, as though mutely inquiring if he could possibly take Hilda into surroundings more impoverished than those amid which she was at present. But Marsh ignored the look entirely, for the very good reason that its contention was irrefutable even by him. So he stalked away, leaving Gerald to gnaw his moustache, and curse the fate which had robbed him of his money and now threatened to rob him of "the only girl he ever loved." "But Hilda will be true," he thought. "She is too fond of me to lose me!" She entered the room alone, red-eyed and pale, but with a look of determination on her face which sent a chill through Arkel's heart the moment he saw it. He rose to meet her, holding out his arms in welcome. Her name sprang to his lips. But she waved him back. "No, no, Gerald! I cannot! I cannot! We must part." "We will not part!" cried the man furiously. "You love me and I love you--no one has the right to part us." "I must obey my parents." "Not if they counsel you wrongly." "Do they counsel me wrongly?" asked Hilda. "Gerald, do be reasonable--you are poor; I am poor. How can we marry?" "I will work for you, Hilda--with you I can do anything!" The girl shook her head sadly. "If you were any other sort of man than what you are, perhaps," she said with relentless common-sense. "But I know you better than you do yourself. You love pleasure and you hate work. You have always pursued the one and avoided the other. I hate poverty with all the loathing of a lifetime. We should soon tire of each other. Believe me, Gerald, love in a cottage would not suit either of us. It would be madness to attempt it. Fond as I am of you I cannot contemplate it. It isn't to be thought of."