hat you brought me up
those confounded tower steps this morning? Because, in that case, I
wouldn't have minded waiting, you know. It's hardly fair upon a man,
is it, to put him to the treadmill before he's well awake in the
morning?'

'If you were like other young men,' retorted Mr. Piper, 'you'd be up
and down them steps twenty times a day' (George shuddered); 'but oh
no! my gentleman can crawl on to the lawn and carry on with a----'

'Stop there!' cried George, in a tone that made his father silent
through sheer astonishment (George had never been known to raise his
voice before). 'Do you know the relation in which Laura stands to
me?'

He looked Mr. Piper full in the face as he said it, and seeing the
ghastly change that came over the face as he looked, he felt that he
had been over-hasty. For the glass through which Mr. Piper had made
a feint of looking dropped from his quivering fingers and his lips
worked in a distorted fashion over his discoloured teeth; the blood
rushing away from his florid cheeks left them streaked with thready,
sanguineous veins, mottling the ash-coloured patches; and rushed
back again with a force that seemed to swell the veins round his
temples to bursting....

'What's the matter, father?' said George at last, not with any of
Louey's vehement alarm, but eyeing him rather gravely and curiously.
'Do you object to my looking upon Laura in the light of
a--_sister_?'

'Eh?' said Mr. Piper. His power of articulation was slowly
returning, but his breath as yet was only equal to the monosyllable.

'Of a sister,' repeated George slowly, 'and a friend.'

'Your _sister_!' said Mr. Piper, as soon as he could speak
distinctly. 'That's as you choose to take it. She's none o' mine,
thank God! But you take and make her more than your sister, and see
how soon you'll come to repent it. It's down in my will. I've sworn
it. Dead or alive, I won't have the jade in my family! If you've got
a fancy for her, you may take her, but never come anigh Piper's Hill
again!'

'You mistake the position of affairs,' said George calmly. 'Laura
wouldn't have me if I wanted!'

'Ho, ho!' Mr. Piper's laugh was more insulting than mirthful.
'That's why she comes and hugs you on the lawn of a morning, is it?'

The interview ended with an intimation that Mr. Piper will n