dvantage of our having met. We understand each other. We quite
agree. We have a most complete and thorough explanation, and we know
what course to take.--Why don't you taste your tenant's wine? It's
really very good.'

'Pray who,' said Mr Haredale, 'have aided Emma, or your son? Who are
their go-betweens, and agents--do you know?'

'All the good people hereabouts--the neighbourhood in general, I think,'
returned the other, with his most affable smile. 'The messenger I sent
to you to-day, foremost among them all.'

'The idiot? Barnaby?'

'You are surprised? I am glad of that, for I was rather so myself. Yes.
I wrung that from his mother--a very decent sort of woman--from whom,
indeed, I chiefly learnt how serious the matter had become, and so
determined to ride out here to-day, and hold a parley with you on this
neutral ground.--You're stouter than you used to be, Haredale, but you
look extremely well.'

'Our business, I presume, is nearly at an end,' said Mr Haredale, with
an expression of impatience he was at no pains to conceal. 'Trust me, Mr
Chester, my niece shall change from this time. I will appeal,' he added
in a lower tone, 'to her woman's heart, her dignity, her pride, her
duty--'

'I shall do the same by Ned,' said Mr Chester, restoring some errant
faggots to their places in the grate with the toe of his boot. 'If there
is anything real in this world, it is those amazingly fine feelings and
those natural obligations which must subsist between father and son. I
shall put it to him on every ground of moral and religious feeling. I
shall represent to him that we cannot possibly afford it--that I have
always looked forward to his marrying well, for a genteel provision for
myself in the autumn of life--that there are a great many clamorous dogs
to pay, whose claims are perfectly just and right, and who must be paid
out of his wife's fortune. In short, that the very highest and most
honourable feelings of our nature, with every consideration of filial
duty and affection, and all that sort of thing, imperatively demand that
he should run away with an heiress.'

'And break her heart as speedily as possible?' said Mr Haredale, drawing
on his glove.

'There Ned will act exactly as he pleases,' returned the other,
sipping his wine; 'that's entirely his affair. I wouldn't for the
world interfere with my son, Haredale, beyond a certain point. The
relationship between father and son, you know, is positively quite