“My father has traveled much for his health,” said Inza.
“And, having failed to find it, I’m going back to Fardale to die,” declared the invalid, in a weak voice.
“Oh, not so bad as that, I hope!” cried Swift. “You don’t want to give up that way. The man who gives up and says ‘die’ usually has his way. I knew a fellow in our company who felt that way just before a skirmish. He got it, all right. The little yellow devils soaked him in four different places, and he just lay down and groaned, ‘I knew it was coming!’ Then he croaked. If he hadn’t felt certain he was booked, it’s possible he might be living still.”
“Folly,” declared Bernard Burrage. “His time had come, and he was forewarned. It is true with me. I have had the warning.”
“Please—please don’t talk that way, papa!” begged Inza, the color going out of her face.
“Forgive me, child,” he murmured. “I forgot.” Then he relapsed into silence, and sat looking out of the window at the snow-bound world.
Swift shook his head, but there was a mist in Inza’s eyes and she gazed through a blurring veil at the father she had ever loved, despite his faults.
For Bernard Burrage had not been perfect. Once there had been a time that, with a persistency that seemed a craze, he had done his best to marry his beautiful daughter off to a wealthy man. His false view of life had led him to fancy he was best providing for her if he secured her a rich husband.
Perhaps he was not so much to blame, for he had felt the spirit of these days which has seized upon womanhood. He understood how the woman of to-day loves luxury, ease, show, society, position, and all that, and how thousands of them are ready and willing to sell body and soul for that which they covet.
In the past it was different. Then girls married because they loved, and they were willing to do everything in their power to aid their husbands in the struggle to rise. Then the question was not if the man could support them in the style to which they had become accustomed, but the girl was ready to take him, if she loved him, “for better or worse,” to cast her fortunes with his, to rise with him or to fall with him.
But Bernard Burrage had not looked at marriage in this way, and he did not give his daughter credit for having more heart and soul than that of the average modern girl spoiled by longings for wealth and social position.