_
Thus the great banker stood, a colossus of wealth and stability to the
eye, though ready to crumble at a touch; and indeed self-doomed, for
bankruptcy was now his game.
This was a miserable man, far more miserable than his son, whose
happiness he had thwarted: his face was furrowed and his hair thinned by
a secret struggle; and of all the things that gnawed him, like the fox,
beneath his Spartan robe, none was more bitter than to have borrowed five
thousand pounds of his children and sunk it.
His wife's father, a keen man of business, who saw there was little
affection on his side, had settled his daughter's money on her for life,
and in case of her death, on the children upon coming of age. The
marriage of Alfred or Jane would be sure to expose him; settlements would
be proposed; lawyers engaged to peer into the trust, &c. No; they _must_
remain single for the present, or else marry wealth.
So, when his son announced an attachment to a young lady living in a
suburban villa, it was a terrible blow, though he took it with outward
calm, as usual. But if, instead of prating about beauty, virtue, and
breeding, Alfred had told him hard cash in five figures could be settled
by the bride's family on the young couple, he would have welcomed the
wedding with great external indifference, but a secret gush of joy; for
then he could throw himself on Alfred's generosity, and be released from
that one corroding debt; perhaps allowed to go on drawing the interest of
the remainder.
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