Part 37 (2/2)
”You seem to know all about it.”
”The General talks a lot--and anyhow, all the world knows it. It's no secret.”
”I rather think that Jean doesn't know it. I haven't told her. She realizes that he is rich, but it doesn't seem to have made much impression on her.”
”Most people will think she is lucky to have caught him.”
”He is not a fish,” with rising anger, ”and as for Jean, she'd marry him if he hadn't a penny, and you know it, Hilda.”
Hilda considered that for a moment. Then she said, ”Is it his money or his father's?”
”Belongs to the old man. Derry's mother had nothing but an irreproachable family tree.”
Hilda's long hands were clasped on the desk, her eyes were upon them.
”If he shouldn't like his son's marriage, he might make things uncomfortable.”
”Why shouldn't he like my Jean?”
”He probably will. But there's always the chance that he may not. He may be more ambitious.”
Dr. McKenzie ran his fingers through his crinkled hair. ”She's good enough for--a king.”
”You think that, naturally, but he isn't the doting father of an only daughter.”
”If he thinks that my daughter isn't good enough for his son--”
”You needn't shout at me like that,” calmly; ”but he knows as well as you do that Derry Drake's millions could get him any girl.”
He had a flas.h.i.+ng sense of the coa.r.s.e fiber of Hilda's mental make-up.
”My Jean is a well-born and well-bred woman,” he said, slowly. ”It is a thing that money can't buy.”
”Money buys a very good counterfeit. Lots of the women who come here aren't ladies, not in the sense that you mean it, but on the surface you can't tell them apart.”
He knew that it was true. No one knows better than a doctor what is beneath the veneer of social convention and personal hypocrisy.
”And as for Jean,” her quiet voice a.n.a.lyzed, ”what do you know of her, really? You've kept her shut away from the things that could hurt her, but how do you know what will happen when you open the gate?”
Yet Emily had said--? His hand came down on top of the desk. ”I think we won't discuss Jean.”
”Very well, but you brought it on yourself. And now please go away, I've got to finish this and get back--”
He went reluctantly, and returned to say, ”You'll come over again before I sail, and straighten things out for me?”
”Of course.”
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