Montgomery.
"Ah! he says that--he calls it an engagement?"
"Oh, he has told me you didn't like it."
"Did he tell you that I don't like HIM?"
"Yes, he told me that too. I said I couldn't help it!" added Mrs.
Montgomery.
"Of course you can't. But what you can do is to tell me I am right--
to give me an attestation, as it were." And the Doctor accompanied
this remark with another professional smile.
Mrs. Montgomery, however, smiled not at all; it was obvious that she
could not take the humorous view of his appeal. "That is a good deal
to ask," she said at last.
"There can be no doubt of that; and I must, in conscience, remind you
of the advantages a young man marrying my daughter would enjoy. She
has an income of ten thousand dollars in her own right, left her by
her mother; if she marries a husband I approve, she will come into
almost twice as much more at my death."
Mrs. Montgomery listened in great earnestness to this splendid
financial statement; she had never heard thousands of dollars so
familiarly talked about. She flushed a little with excitement.
"Your daughter will be immensely rich," she said softly.
"Precisely--that's the bother of it."
"And if Morris should marry her, he--he--" And she hesitated
timidly.
"He would be master of all that money? By no means. He would be
master of the ten thousand a year that she has from her mother; but I
should leave every penny of my own fortune, earned in the laborious
exercise of my profession, to public institutions.
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