"My poor, sweet baby," groaned Severance. "What's two hundred thousand dollars? Fifty thousand pounds, isn't it? That's pin money for you and your mother; and you go on making more while you stay on the stage, as a spider winds silvery thread out of itself. But for me it's not nearly enough, as things are now. It wouldn't save the situation. I've come into more than that amount with the estates. It's a drop in the bucket, I find. The fellows behind me in the succession resigned themselves to poverty. I can't, for the best of reasons. I'm in a beastly moneylender's hands. I began by owing him ten thousand pounds. It's more like eighty thousand to-day. Now, maybe, you see where we stand." "No, I don't see yet, where we are concerned," Mary objected. "You said you'd some suggestion--some proposal to make. But if Manse's money isn't enough to----" "It isn't, even if I could take it." "And if you're considering the idea of marrying your cousin----" "I've got to marry her. That's all there is to it. I've realised it since a heart-to-heart talk old Con forced me to have with him a fortnight before we sailed. I saw that some day this thing would have to happen." "Then where--does Marise come in?" Mary suddenly bristled like a mother-porcupine. For a moment Severance did not speak. It seemed that he could not. His gaze turned first to Marise, then to Mary. Could it be possible that those black eyes of his glittered with starting tears? "I'm going to tell you," he said slowly, at last. "I want to tell you on my knees. It's the only way a man could dare to say a thing like this to a girl like Marise--to a woman like you, Mrs. Sorel." He did not wait for a word from either, but dropped to one knee, and threw his arms about both women as they clung nervously together. They could feel the throb of blood in his muscles. His face was no longer merely handsome; it was beautiful with a tragic, Greek beauty. The look in his eyes (Mary thought vaguely, as one thinks under a light dose of ether) would touch a heart of stone. "I've got to marry OEnone," he repeated, "or come the worst cropper of any Severance for a century. If I'd never met you, Marise, I'd have done it without a qualm. OEnone's a nice little thing--not the sort to keep a man in leading-strings because she holds the purse. I could have amused myself without much fear that she'd fuss--or tell tales to her father. But when a man loves a woman as I love you, it changes his outlook. I must see you. I must be with you. I can't live away from you for long." "I'm afraid you'll have to when you've married Miss Ionides," Mary's frozen voice warned him. "Wait! Listen to my plan. I've only just thoroughly worked it out. I----" "Yet you told us a minute ago that you'd decided on this marriage before sailing."