He need not seek a rich girl--there was certainly enough money in the Ryder family to provide for both.

He wished they knew a girl, for example, as attractive and clever as Miss Green.

Ah! he thought, there was a girl who would make a man of Jefferson--brainy, ambitious, active! And the more he thought of it the more the idea grew on him that Miss Green would be an ideal daughter-in-law, and at the same time snatch his son from the clutches of the Rossmore woman.
Jefferson, during all these weeks, was growing more and more impatient.

He knew that any day now Shirley might take her departure from their house and return to Massapequa.

If the impeachment proceedings went against her father it was more than likely that he would lose her forever, and if, on the contrary, the judge were acquitted, Shirley never would be willing to marry him without his father's consent; and this, he felt, he would never obtain.