ow, because, in the most
straightforward way, I come to the young lady's parents and tell them
that I love their child. Is it a disgrace to me that of all whom I have
seen I think her to be the loveliest and best? Her father may reject me;
but he will be very unreasonable if he is angry with me.'

She could not tell him about the dove and the kite, or the lamb and the
wolf. She could not explain to him that he was a sinner, unregenerated,
a wild man in her estimation, a being of quite another kind than
herself, and therefore altogether unfitted to be the husband of her
girl! Her husband, no doubt, could do all this--if he would. But then
she too had her own skeleton in her own cupboard. She was not quite
assured of her own husband's regeneration. He went to church regularly,
and read his Bible, and said his prayers. But she feared,--she was
almost sure,--that he liked the bank-books better than his Bible. That
he would reject this offer from John Caldigate, she did not doubt. She
had always heard her husband speak of the man with disapprobation and
scorn. She had heard the whole story of Davis and the Newmarket debts.
She had heard, too, the man's subsequent prosperity spoken of as a thing
of chance,--as having come from gambling on an extensive scale. She
herself regarded money acquired in so unholy a way as likely to turn to
slate-stones, or to fly away and become worse than nothing. She knew
that Mr. Bolton, whether regenerate or not, regarded young Caldigate as
an adventurer, and that therefore, the idea of such a marriage would be
as unpalatable to him as to herself. But she did not dare to tell her
visitor that he was an unregenerate kite, lest her husband would not
support her.

'Whatever more you have got to say, you had better say it to him,' she
replied to the lover when he had come to the end of his defence. At that
moment the door opened, and a gentleman entered the room. This was Mr.
Robert Bolton, the attorney. Now of all her husband's sons,--who were,
of course, not her sons,--Mrs. Bolton saw this one the most frequently
and perhaps liked him the least. Or it might be juster to say that she
was more afraid of him than of the others. The two eldest, who were both
in the bank, were quiet, sober men, who lived affluently and were
married to religious wives, and brought up their children plentifully
and piously. She did not see very much of them, because her life was not
a social life. But among her friends