t speculated, for fear my luck should
desert me. I have simply allowed the money to accumulate on mortgage
and other investments, and bided my time, for I have sworn to have
those estates back before I die. It is for this cause that I have
toiled, and thought, and screwed, and been cut by the whole
neighbourhood for twenty years; but now I think that, with your help,
my time is coming."

"With _my_ help. What is it that you wish me to do?"

"Listen," answered her father, nervously tapping his pencil on the
account-book before him. "George is not very fond of Isleworth--in
fact, he rather dislikes it; but, like all the Caresfoots, he does not
care about parting with landed property, and, though we appear to be
good friends, he hates me too much ever to consent, under ordinary
circumstances, to sell it to me. It is to you I look to overcome that
objection."

"I! How?"

"You are a woman and you ask me how you should get the blind side of a
man!"

"I do not in the least understand you."

Philip smiled incredulously.

"Then I suppose I must explain. If ever you take the trouble to look
at yourself in the glass, you will probably see that Nature has been
very kind to you in the matter of good looks; nor are you by any means
deficient in brains. Your cousin George is very fond of a pretty
woman, and, to be plain, what I want you to do is to make use of your
advantages to get him under your thumb and persuade him into selling
the property."

"Oh! father, how can you?" ejaculated Angela, in an agony of shame.

"You idiot, I won't want you to marry him; I only want you to make a
fool of him. Surely, being of the sex you are, you won't find _that_
an uncongenial occupation."

Angela's blushes had given away to pallor now, and she answered with
cold contempt:

"I don't think you quite understand what a girl feels--at least, what
I feel, for I know no other girls. Perhaps it would be useless for me
to try to explain. I had rather go blind than use my eyes for such a
shameful purpose."

"Angela," said her father, with as much temper as he ever showed now,
"let me tell you that you are a silly fool; you are more, you are an
encumbrance. Your birth," he added, bitterly, "robbed me of your
mother, and the fact of your being a girl deprived our branch of the
family of their rights. Now that you have grown up, you prefer to
gratify your whims rather than help me to realize the object of my
life by a simple course of acti