"It is now seven. At eight you go to the initiation of Molyneux,
and you have promised to give Lind his answer to-night. Well?"
Brand was playing idly with a pocket-pencil. After a minute or two, he
said,
"I promised Natalie to consider this thing without any reference to her
whatever--that I would decide just as if there was no possibility of her
becoming my wife. I promised that; but it is hard to do, Evelyn. I have
tried to imagine my never having seen her, and that I had been led into
this affair solely through you. Then I do think that if you had come to
me and said that my giving up every penny I possess would forward a good
work--would do indirect benefit to a large number of people, and so
forth--I do think I could have said, 'All right, Evelyn; take it.' I
never cared much for money; I fancy I could get on pretty well on a
sovereign a week. I say that if you had come to me with this request--"
"Precisely," Lord Evelyn said, quickly. "You would have said yes, if I
had come to you. But because it is Lind, whom you distrust, you fall
away from the height of self-sacrifice, and regard the proposal from the
point of view of the Waldegrave Club.
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