feather-brained grandmother proposed for her, to satisfy her pleasure
in a fine sound. English Christian names are my preference. I conceded
Arthur to her without difficulty. She had a voice in David, I recollect;
with very little profit to either of the boys. I had no voice in
Adiante; but I stood at my girl's baptism, and Adiante let her be. At
least I saved the girl from the addition of Arianrod. It was to have
been Adiante Arianrod. Can you credit it? Prince-pah! Nikolas? Have you
a notion of the sort of prince that makes an English lady of the best
blood of England his princess?'

The lawyer had a precise notion of the sort of prince appearing to Mr.
Adister in the person of his foreign son-in-law. Prince Nikolas had been
described to him before, with graphic touches upon the quality of the
reputation he bore at the courts and in the gambling-saloons of Europe.
Dreading lest his client's angry heat should precipitate him on the
prince again, to the confusion of a lady's ears, Mr. Camminy gave an
emphatic and short affirmative.

'You know what he is like?' said Mr. Adister, with a face of disgust
reflected from the bare thought of the hideous likeness.

Mr. Camminy assured him that the description of the prince's lineaments
would not be new. It was, as he was aware, derived from a miniature
of her husband, transmitted by the princess, on its flight out of her
father's loathing hand to the hearthstone and under his heel.

Assisted by Caroline, he managed to check the famous delineation of the
adventurer prince in which a not very worthy gentleman's chronic fever
of abomination made him really eloquent, quick to unburden himself in
the teeth of decorum.

'And my son-in-law! My son-in-law!' ejaculated Mr. Adister, tossing his
head higher, and so he stimulated his amazement and abhorrence of the
portrait he rather wondered at them for not desiring to have sketched
for their execration of it, alluringly foul as it was: while they in
concert drew him back to the discussion of his daughter's business,
reiterating prudent counsel, with a knowledge that they had only to wait
for the ebbing of his temper.

'Let her be informed, sir, that by coming to England she can settle the
business according to her wishes in one quarter of the time it would
take a Commission sent out to her--if we should be authorised to send
out one,' said Mr. Camminy. 'By committing the business to you, I
fancy I perceive your daughter's disposi