e case is the clearest case of
fire by negligence that I have ever known, in addition to that,' he
continued.

'I don't want them rebuilt; you know it was intended by my father,
directly they fell in, to clear the site for a new entrance to the
park?'

'Yes, but that doesn't affect the position, which is that Farmer
Springrove is in your power to an extent which is very serious for him.'

'I won't do it--'tis a conspiracy.'

'Won't you for me?' he said eagerly.

Miss Aldclyffe changed colour.

'I don't threaten now, I implore,' he said.

'Because you might threaten if you chose,' she mournfully answered. 'But
why be so--when your marriage with her was my own pet idea long before
it was yours? What must I do?'

'Scarcely anything: simply this. When I have seen old Mr. Springrove,
which I shall do in a day or two, and told him that he will be expected
to rebuild the houses, do you see the young man. See him yourself, in
order that the proposals made may not appear to be anything more than an
impulse of your own. You or he will bring up the subject of the houses.
To rebuild them would be a matter of at least six hundred pounds, and
he will almost surely say that we are hard in insisting upon the extreme
letter of the leases. Then tell him that scarcely can you yourself
think of compelling an old tenant like his father to any such painful
extreme--there shall be no compulsion to build, simply a surrender of
the leases. Then speak feelingly of his cousin, as a woman whom you
respect and love, and whose secret you have learnt to be that she is
heart-sick with hope deferred. Beg him to marry her, his betrothed and
your friend, as some return for your consideration towards his father.
Don't suggest too early a day for their marriage, or he will suspect you
of some motive beyond womanly sympathy. Coax him to make a promise to
her that she shall be his wife at the end of a twelvemonth, and get him,
on assenting to this, to write to Cytherea, entirely renouncing her.'

'She has already asked him to do that.'

'So much the better--and telling her, too, that he is about to fulfil
his long-standing promise to marry his cousin. If you think it worth
while, you may say Cytherea was not indisposed to think of me before she
knew I was married. I have at home a note she wrote me the first evening
I saw her, which looks rather warm, and which I could show you. Trust
me, he will give her up. When he is married to Adelaide Hinton