ent. I may as well tell you that the
proposals which he makes as regards settlements are of the most
liberal nature."

"Are they?" answered Ida indifferently. "Is Mr. Cossey coming here to
dinner?"

"Yes, I asked him. I thought that you would like to see him."

"Well, then, I wish you had not," she answered with animation,
"because there is nothing to eat except some cold beef. Really,
father, it is very thoughtless of you;" and she stamped her foot and
went off in a huff, leaving the Squire full of reflection.

"I wonder what it all means," he said to himself. "She can't care
about the man much or she would not make that fuss about his being
asked to dinner. Ida isn't the sort of woman to be caught by the
money, I should think. Well, I know nothing about it; it is no affair
of mine, and I can only take things as I find them."

And then he fell to reflecting that this marriage would be an
extraordinary stroke of luck for the family. Here they were at the
last gasp, mortgaged up the eyes, when suddenly fortune, in the shape
of an, on the whole, perfectly unobjectionable young man, appears,
takes up the mortgages, proposes settlements to the tune of hundreds
of thousands, and even offers to perpetuate the old family name in the
person of his son, should he have one. Such a state of affairs could
not but be gratifying to any man, however unworldly, and the Squire
was not altogether unworldly. That is, he had a keen sense of the
dignity of his social position and his family, and it had all his life
been his chief and laudable desire to be sufficiently provided with
the goods of this world to raise the de la Molles to the position
which they had occupied in former centuries. Hitherto, however, the
tendency of events had been all the other way--the house was a sinking
one, and but the other day its ancient roof had nearly fallen about
their ears. But now the prospect changed as though by magic. On Ida's
marriage all the mortgages, those heavy accumulations of years of
growing expenditure and narrowing means, would roll off the back of
the estate, and the de la Molles of Honham Castle would once more take
the place in the county to which they were undoubtedly entitled.

It is not wonderful that the prospect proved a pleasing one to him, or
that his head was filled with visions of splendours to come.

As it chanced, on that very morning it was necessary for Mr. Quest to
pay the old gentleman a visit in order to obtain h