“Well, sir?” replied Gervase, spreading out his hands and slightly elevating his shoulders. The gesture was French, which irritated Mr Burton more and more: but he said nothing further; and it was not till he had taken up the ‘St James’s Gazette’ which lay on the table, and read through two of those soothing articles on nothing particular with which that journal abounds, and which the merchant in his anger read from beginning to end without the slightest idea what they were about, that he allowed himself to speak again. He was then preternaturally tranquil, with a quietude like that of an anchorite in his voice. “I suppose,” he said, “that you have taken everything into account in making this decision--Miss Thursley, for instance--and given up all idea of marriage, or anything of that kind?” Gervase’s quiet looks became slightly disturbed. He looked up with a certain eagerness. “Given up?----” he said. “Of course,” said Mr Burton, delighted to have got the mastery, “you can’t marry--a girl accustomed to every luxury--on your boy’s allowance. Five hundred a-year is not much--it might do for her pin-money, with a little perhaps to the good for your button-holes. But what you would live upon, in the more serious sense of the words, I don’t know.” The young man’s composure had completely disappeared during this speech. Astonishment, irritation, and dismay came into his face. He did not seem able, however, to believe what was said to him. “I thought--that you were in every way pleased with--the connection,” he said. “Certainly I am--a better business connection could not be, for a young man seriously entering into commercial life. A _dilettante_ is a different pair of shoes----” “A _dilettante_--I don’t object to the name,” said Gervase, with a faint smile. “Madeline is a _dilettante_ too. She has some money of her own. And I feel sure she would agree with me.” “In setting her father at defiance, and marrying upon nothing----?” “Father,” said Gervase, distressed, “I had no intention of setting you at defiance. I have certain opinions--of my own--which are new. Business--is not congenial to me. Some of its methods seem---- But I need not explain. I never meant, however, to set you at defiance. I thought that in myself I--had some claims upon you apart from the business----” “What claims? I am the author of your being, as the old books say, and I’ve responded to that claim by giving you everything that a king’s son could have had. You have been just as well off as the Prince of Wales. What more do you want? I think my claims are better founded than yours. It is I who have a right to something in return, not you.”