t break down before she had looked at her aunt,
and spoken to her aunt with a fierce indignation which had altogether
served to silence Lady Mountjoy for the moment.

PART II.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

MR. BARRY.

"Good-bye, sir. You ought not to be angry with me. I am sure it will be
better for us both to remain as we are." This was said by Miss Dorothy
Grey, as a gentleman departed from her and made his way out of the
front-door at the Fulham Manor-house. Miss Grey had received an offer of
marriage, and had declined it. The offer had been made by a worthy man,
he being no other than her father's partner, Mr. Barry.

It may be remembered that, on discussing the affairs of the firm with
her father, Dolly Grey had been accustomed to call this partner "the
Devil." It was not that she had thought this partner to be specially
devilish, nor was he so. It had ever been Miss Grey's object to have the
affairs of the firm managed with an integrity which among lawyers might
be called Quixotic. Her father she had dubbed "Reason," and herself
"Conscience;" but in calling Mr. Barry "the Devil" she had not intended
to signify any defalcation from honesty more than ordinary in lawyers'
offices. She did, in fact, like Mr. Barry. He would occasionally come
out and dine with her father. He was courteous and respectful, and
performed his duties with diligence. He spent nobody's money but his
own, and not all of that; nor did he look upon the world as a place to
which men were sent that they might play. He was nearly forty years old,
was clean, a little bald, and healthy in all his ways. There was nothing
of a devil about him, except that his conscience was not peculiarly
attentive to abstract honesty and abstract virtue. There must, according
to him, be always a little "give and take" in the world; but in the
pursuit of his profession he gave a great deal more than he took. He
thought himself to be an honest practitioner, and yet in all domestic
professional conferences with her father Mr. Barry had always been Miss
Grey's "Devil."

The possibility of such a request as had been now made had been already
discussed between Dolly and her father. Dolly had said that the idea was
absurd. Mr. Grey had not seen the absurdity. There had been nothing more
common, he had said, than that a young partner should marry an old
partner's daughter. "It's not put into the partnership deed?" Dolly had
rejoined. But Dolly had never believed that t