Besides,"
here his face and tone became serious, "there's one thing we've both
forgotten. This matter of your false name--you can't be married as
Bressant, you know: and if the tenure of your property depends, as you
said, on preserving the _incognito_, I have reason to believe that you
stand an excellent chance of losing every cent of it, the moment the
minister has pronounced your real name."
"No matter!" said the young man, with an impatient movement, as if to
dismiss an unprofitable subject. "I shall have Sophie; my father's will
can't deprive me of her. I don't want to be famous, nor to have a great
reputation--except with her."
The old man was touched at this devotion, unreasonable and impracticable
though it was. He laid his hand kindly on the invalid's big shoulder.
"I don't say but that a wife's a good exchange for the world, my boy;
I'm glad you should feel it, too. But when you marry her, you promise to
support her, as long as you have strength and health to do it. It's a
natural and necessary consequence of your love for her"--and here the
professor paused a moment to marvel at the position in which he found
himself--stating the first axioms of life to such a man as this pupil of
his; "and you should be unwilling to take her, as I certainly should be
to give her, on any other terms.
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