“It is. The girl has a clear income of seventy thousand pounds a year. As her husband, you will be a man of consequence. She owns a house in town, a hunting box in the Scottish Highlands, and other houses in England. You will have horses and hounds; a yacht, if you wish it, at your marine villa, and a bottomless purse. You can paint wretched pictures, and hear the fashionable world praise them as divine. You can become a member of Parliament. All careers are open to the fortunate suitor of Neva Wynde.” The picture was dazzling enough to the half-starved and desperate boy. He liked all these things his father enumerated--the houses, the horses, the luxuries, the money, and the luxurious ease and the honors. He had found it hard to work, and harder to dispose of his work. All the bitterness and hardness of his lot arose before him in black contrast with the brightness and beauty that would mark the destiny of the favored lover of young Neva Wynde. He arose and walked the floor with an impetuous tread, an expression of keen anguish and keener longing in his eyes. His father watched him with a furtive gaze, as a cat watches a mouse. It was necessary to his plans that his son should marry Neva Wynde, and he was sanguine that he would be able to bring about the match. “Well?” he said, tiring of the quick, impetuous walk of his son. “What do you say?” “It is impossible!” returned Rufus abruptly. “Utterly impossible.” “And why, if I may be allowed to ask?” inquired Mr. Black blandly, although a scowl began to gather on his fair forehead. “Because--because--the young lady may have other designs for herself--I can’t marry her for her money--I can’t give up Lally!” “The--the young person who taught music? I understood you to say that she was a corn-chandler’s daughter. And you prefer a low-born, low-bred creature to a wealthy young lady like Miss Wynde? For a young man educated as you have been, your good taste is remarkable. You have a predilection for high-class society, I must say. What is the charm of this not-to-be-given-up ‘Lally?’ Is she beautiful?” “She is beautiful to me.” “Which means that she is beautiful to no one else. The beauty which requires love’s spectacles to distinguish, is ugliness to every one but the lover. Low-born and low-bred,” repeated Mr. Black, dwelling upon the words as if they pleased him, “with a pack of poor and ignorant relations tacked to her skirts, ugly by your own confession, what a brilliant match she would be for the son of the Honorable Craven Black!” “She has no poor relations,” said Rufus hotly. “She has no relations except a great-aunt, whose name she does not know, and who very likely does not dream of her existence. It is true that Lally’s father was a corn-chandler, but he was an honest one, and more than that, he was an intelligent, upright gentlemen. You arch your brows, as if a man could not be a tradesman and a gentleman. If the word gentleman has any meaning, he was a gentleman.”