When he got breath to say anything it was with a mere hot muttering into my face, as he held me with my head thrown back: "I know what I'm doing, little Alix. You mustn't ask me to count the cost. The cost only makes you the more precious. Since I have to suffer for you I'll suffer, but I'll never give you up. Do you take me for a fellow who'd weigh money or comfort in the balances with you?" "No, Hugh," I whispered. His embrace was enough to strangle me. "Well, then, never ask me to think about this thing again, I've thought all I'm going to. As I mean to get you anyhow, little Alix, you may as well promise now, this very minute, that whatever happens you'll be my wife." But I didn't promise. First I got him to release me on the ground that some bathers, after a dip at Eastons Beach, were going by, with their heads on a level with our feet. Then I asked the natural question: "What do you think of doing now?" He said he was going to let no mushrooms spring in his footsteps, and that he was taking a morning train for New York. He talked about bankers and brokers and moneyed things in general in a way I couldn't follow, though I could see that in spite of Cousin Andrew Brew's rejection he still expected great things of himself. Like me, he seemed to feel that there was a faculty for conjuring money in the very name of Brokenshire. Never having known what it was to be without as much money as he wanted, never having been given to suppose that such an eventuality could come to pass, it was perhaps not strange that he should consider his power of commanding a large income to be in the nature of things. Bankers and brokers would be glad to have him as their associate from the mere fact that he was his father's son. I endeavored to throw a cup of cold water on too much certainty, by saying: "But, Hugh, dear, won't you have to begin at the beginning? Wasn't that what your cousin Andrew Brew--?" "Cousin Andrew Brew is an ass. He's one great big Boston stick-in-the-mud. He wouldn't know which side his bread was buttered on, not if it was buttered on both." "Still," I persisted, "you'll have to begin at the beginning." "Well, I shouldn't be the first." "No, but you might be the first to do it with a clog round his feet in the shape of a person like me. How many years did your cousin say--twenty or thirty, wasn't it?" "R-rot, little Alix!" He brought out the interjection with a contemptuous roll. "It might be twenty or thirty years for a numskull like Duffers, but for me! There are ways by which a man who's in the business already, as you might say, goes skimming over the ground the common herd have to tramp. Look at the gentlemen-rankers in your own army. They enlist as privates, and in two or three years they're in the officers' mess with a commission. That comes of their education and--" "That's often true, I admit. I've known of several cases in my own experience. But even two or three years--" "Wouldn't you wait for me?"