“To confess that you were under bad influence, and were not the Margaret I can make of you.  Put that aside.  If you remain as you are, think of the snares.  If you marry one you despise, look at the pit.  Yes; you will be mine!  Half my love of my country and my profession is love of you.  Margaret is fire in my blood.  I used to pray for opportunities, that Margaret might hear of me.  I knew that gallant actions touched her; I would have fallen gladly; I was sure her heart would leap when she heard of me.  Let it beat against mine.  Speak!”

“I will,” said Mrs. Lovell, and she suppressed the throbs of her bosom. 
Her voice was harsh and her face bloodless.  “How much money have you,
Percy?”

This sudden sluicing of cold water on his heat of passion petrified him.

“Money,” he said, with a strange frigid scrutiny of her features.  As in the flash of a mirror, he beheld her bony, worn, sordid, unacceptable.  But he was fain to admit it to be an eminently proper demand for enlightenment.

He said deliberately, “I possess an income of five hundred a year, extraneous, and in addition to my pay as major in Her Majesty’s service.”

Then he paused, and the silence was like a growing chasm between them.

She broke it by saying, “Have you any expectations?”

This was crueller still, though no longer astonishing.  He complained in his heart merely that her voice had become so unpleasant.

With emotionless precision, he replied, “At my mother’s death—­”

She interposed a soft exclamation.

“At my mother’s death there will come to me by reversion, five or six thousand pounds.  When my father dies, he may possibly bequeath his property to me.  On that I cannot count.”

Veritable tears were in her eyes.  Was she affecting to weep sympathetically in view of these remote contingencies?

“You will not pretend that you know me now, Percy,” she said, trying to smile; and she had recovered the natural feminine key of her voice.  “I am mercenary, you see; not a mercenary friend.  So, keep me as a friend—­ say you will be my friend.”

“Nay, you had a right to know,” he protested.

“It was disgraceful—­horrible; but it was necessary for me to know.”

“And now that you do know?”

“Now that I know, I have only to say—­be as merciful in your idea of me as you can.”

She dropped her hand in his, and it was with a thrill of dismay that he felt the rush of passion reanimating his frozen veins.

“Be mercenary, but be mine!  I will give you something better to live for than this absurd life of fashion.  You reckon on what our expenditure will be by that standard.  It’s comparative poverty; but—­but you can have some luxuries.  You can have a carriage, a horse to ride.  Active service may come:  I may rise.  Give yourself to me, and you must love me, and regret nothing.”