PAUL AMBROSE did not die and leave his fortune to Halidon, but the following summer he did something far more unexpected. He went abroad again, and came back married. Now our busy fancy had never seen Paul married. Even Ned recognized the vague unlikelihood of such a metamorphosis.
"He'd stick at the parson's fee--not to mention the best man's scarf-pin. And I should hate," Ned added sentimentally, "to see 'the touch of a woman's hand' desecrate the sublime ugliness of the ancestral home. Think of such a house made 'cozy'!"
But when the news came he would own neither to surprise nor to disappointment.
"Goodbye, poor Academy!" I exclaimed, tossing over the bridegroom's eight-page rhapsody to Halidon, who had received its duplicate by the same post.
"Now, why the deuce do you say that?" he growled. "I never saw such a beast as you are for imputing mean motives."
To defend myself from this accusation I put out my hand and recovered Paul's letter.
"Here: listen to this. 'Studying art in Paris when I met her--"the vision and the faculty divine, but lacking the accomplishment," etc. . . . A little ethereal profile, like one of Piero della Francesca's angels . . . not rich, thank heaven, _but not afraid of money_, and already enamored of my project for fertilizing my sterile millions . . .'"
"Well, why the deuce--?" Ned began again, as though I had convicted myself out of my friend's mouth; and I could only grumble obscurely: "It's all too pat."
He brushed aside my misgivings. "Thank heaven, she can't paint, any how. And now that I think of it, Paul's just the kind of chap who ought to have a dozen children."
