was a fortune-hunter. I should have thought that
he was a young beggar who wished to get hold of the girl he fancies,
and that's all. Still, you know him best, and I dare say you are right.
Anyway, for your own peculiar and crack-brained reasons, you don't want
this business, and I say at once you can't want it less than I do. Do
you suppose that I wish to see my only child, who will have half a
million of money and might be a countess, or half a dozen countesses,
to-morrow, married to the son of a beggarly sniveller like you, for as
you are so fond of the pure and sacred truth, I'll give it you--a
fellow who can come and peach upon your own boy and his girl."

"My conscience and my duty----" began Mr. Knight.

"Oh! drat your conscience and blow your duty. You're a spy and a
backbiting tell-tale, that's what you are. Did you never kiss a girl
yourself?"

"Never until after I was married, when we are specially enjoined by the
great Apostle----"

"Then I'm sorry for your wife, for she must have had a lot to teach
you. But let's stop slanging, we have our own opinions of each other
and there's an end. Now we have both the same object, you because you
are a pious crank and no more human than a dried eel, and I because I
am a man of the world who want to see my daughter where she ought to
be, wearing a coronet in the House of Lords. The question is: How is
the job to be done? You don't understand Isobel, but I do. If her back
is put up, wild horses won't move her. She'd snap her fingers in my
face, and tell me to go to a place that you are better acquainted with
than I am, or will be, and take my money with me. Of course, I could
hold her for a few months, till she is of age perhaps, but after that,
No. So it seems that the only chance is your son. Now, what's his weak
point? Can he be bought off?"

"Certainly not," said Mr. Knight.

"Oh! that's odd in one who, you say, is a fortune-hunter. Well, what is
it? Everyone has a weak point, and another girl won't do just now."

"His weakest point is his fondness for that treacherous and abominable
sex of which I have just had so painful an example; and in the church
too, yes, in my church."

"And a jolly good place to get to in such a rain, for of course they
didn't know that you were hiding under the pews. But I've told you that
cock won't fight at present. What's the next?"

At these accumulated insults Mr. Knight turned perfectly livid with
suppressed rage. But he d