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 action that could do no one any harm. I never asked you to commit yourself in any way. Well, well, it is what I must expect. We have not seen much of each other heretofore, and perhaps the less we meet in the future the better."
"You have no right to talk to me so," she answered, with flashing eyes, "though I am your daughter, and it is cowardly to reproach me with my birth, my sex, and my dependence. Am I responsible for any of these things? But I will not burden you long. And as to what you wanted me to do, and think such a little of, I ask you, is it what my poor mother would have wished her daughter——"
Here Philip abruptly rose, and left the room and the house.
"She is as like her mother as possible," he mused, as soon as he was clear of the house. "It might have been Hilda herself, only she is twice as beautiful as Hilda was. I shall have another bad night after this, I know I shall. I must get rid of that girl somehow, I cannot bear her about me; she is a daily reminder of things I dare not remember, and whenever she stares at me with those great eyes of hers, I feel as though she were looking through me. I wonder if she knows the story of Maria Lee!"
And then dismissing, or trying to dismiss, the matter from his mind, he took his way across the fields to Isleworth Hall, a large white brick mansion in the Queen Anne style, about two miles distant from the Abbey, and, on arrival, asked for his cousin George, and was at once shown into that gentleman's presence.
Years had told upon George more than they had upon Philip, and, though there were no touches of grey in the flaming red of his hair, the bloodshot eyes, and the puckered crowsfeet beneath them, to say nothing of the slight but constant trembling of the hand, all showed that he was a man well on in middle-life, and who had lived every day of it. Time, too, had made the face more intensely unpleasant and vulgar-looking than ever. Such Caresfoot characteristics as it possessed were, year by year, giving place, in an increasingly greater degree, to the kitchen-maid strain introduced by the mother. In short, George Caresfoot did not even look a gentleman, whereas Philip certainly did.
"You don't seem very well, George. I am afraid that your travels have not agreed with you."
"My dear Philip," answered his cousin, in a languid and affected voice, "if you had lived the life that I have for the last twenty years, you would look a little knocked up. I have had some very good times; but the fact is, that I have been too prodigal of my strength, not thought enough about the future. It is a great mistake, and one of the worst results is that I am utterly blase of everything; even la belle passion is played out for me. I haven't seen a woman I care twopence about for ten years."
"Ah! you should sell this place, and take a house in town; it would suit you much better."
"I can do that without selling the place. I don't intend to sell the place—in fact, nothing would induce me to do so. Some day I may marry, and want to transmit it to some future Caresfoot; but I confess I don't mean to do that just yet. Marry when you want a nurse, but never before; that's my maxim. Marriage is an excellent institution for parsons and fools, the two classes that Providence has created to populate the world; but a wise man should as soon think of walking into a spring-trap. Take your own case, for instance, my dear Philip; look what marriage led to."
"At any rate," answered his cousin, bitterly, "it led to your advantage."
"Exactly; and that is one of the reasons why I have such a respect for the institution in the abstract. It has been my personal benefactor, and I worship it accordingly—at a distance. By the way, talking of marriage reminds me of its legitimate fruits. Bellamy tells me that your daughter Angela (if I had a daughter, I should call her Diabola, it is more appropriate for a woman) has grown uncommonly handsome. Bring her to see me; I adore beauty in all its forms, especially its female form. Is she really so handsome?"
"I am no judge, but you will soon have an opportunity of forming an opinion—that is, I hope so. I propose coming with Angela to make a formal call on you to-morrow."
"Good. Tell my fair cousin that I shall be certain to be in, and be
prepared, metaphorically, to fall at the feet of so much loveliness.
By the way, that reminds me; you have heard of Bellamy's, or rather
Mrs. Bellamy's, good fortune, I suppose?"
"No."
"What—not? Why, he is now Sir John Bellamy, knight."
"Indeed! How is that?"
"You remember the bye-election six months back?"
"Oh, yes! I was actually badgered by Mrs. Bellamy into promising to vote, much against my personal convenience."
"Exactly. Well, just at the time, old Prescott died, you may remember that Mr. Showers, the member of the Government, was unseated on petition from some borough or other, and came down here post-haste to get re-elected. But he had Sir Percy Vivyan against him, and, as I know to my cost, this benighted country is not fond of those who preach the gospel of progress. Bellamy, who is a stout Radical, as you know—chiefly, I fancy, because there is more to be got out of that side of politics—got the job as Showers' agent. But, three days before, it became quite clear that his cause, cabinet minister or not, was hopeless. Then it was that Mrs.—I beg her
