rtainly felt some scruples of conscience at the sacrifice
he was making of his ward, and stronger still respecting his ward's
fortune; but he appeased them with the reflection that if his son were
a gambler, a _roue_, and a scamp, Lord Ballindine was probably just as
bad; and that if the latter were to spend all Fanny's money there would
be no chance of redemption; whereas he could at any rate settle on his
wife a jointure, which would be a full compensation for the loss of her
fortune, should she outlive her husband and father-in-law. Besides, he
looked on Lord Kilcullen's faults as a father is generally inclined to
look on those of a son, whom he had not entirely given up--whom he is
still striving to redeem. He called his iniquitous vices, follies--his
licentiousness, love of pleasure--his unprincipled expenditure and
extravagance, a want of the knowledge of what money was: and his worst
sin of all, because the one least likely to be abandoned, his positive,
unyielding damning selfishness, he called "fashion"--the fashion of the
young men of the day.

Poor Lord Cashel! he wished to be honest to his ward; and yet to save
his son, and his own pocket at the same time, at her expense: he
wished to be, in his own estimation, high-minded, honourable, and
disinterested, and yet he could not resist the temptation to be
generous to his own flesh and blood at the expense of another. The
contest within him made him miserable; but the devil and mammon were
too strong for him, particularly coming as they did, half hidden
beneath the gloss of parental affection. There was little of the Roman
about the earl, and he could not condemn his own son; so he fumed and
fretted, and twisted himself about in the easy chair in his dingy
book-room, and passed long hours in trying to persuade himself that it
was for Fanny's advantage that he was going to make her Lady Kilcullen.

He might have saved himself all his anxiety. Fanny Wyndham had much
too strong a mind--much too marked a character of her own, to be made
Lady Anything by Lord Anybody. Lord Cashel might possibly prevent her
from marrying Frank, especially as she had been weak enough, through
ill-founded pique and anger, to lend him her name for dismissing him;
but neither he nor anyone else could make her accept one man, while she
loved another, and while that other was unmarried.

Since the interview between Fanny and her uncle and aunt, which has
been recorded, she had been nearly