rceive that he was acting--to use her poor dear old-fashioned
word--reprehensibly in frightening the prince to further your interests.
From what I gathered he went off in a song about them. She said he talked
so well! And aunty Dorothy, too! I should nearly as soon have expected
grandada to come in for his turn of the delusion. How I wish he was here!
Uberly goes by the first boat to bring him down. I feel with Miss Goodwin
that it will be a disgrace for all of us--the country's disgrace. As for
our family! . . . Harry, and your name! Good-bye. Do your best.'

I was in the mood to ask, 'On behalf of the country?' She had, however, a
glow and a ringing articulation in her excitement that forbade trifling;
a minute's reflection set me weighing my power of will against my
father's. I nodded to her.

'Come to us when you are at liberty,' she called.

I have said that I weighed my power of will against my father's.
Contemplation of the state of the scales did not send me striding to meet
him. Let it be remembered--I had it strongly in memory that he habitually
deluded himself under the supposition that the turn of all events having
an aspect of good fortune had been planned by him of old, and were
offered to him as the legitimately-won fruits of a politic life. While
others deemed him mad, or merely reckless, wild, a creature living for
the day, he enjoyed the conceit of being a profound schemer, in which he
was fortified by a really extraordinary adroitness to take advantage of
occurrences: and because he was prompt in an emergency, and quick to
profit of a crisis, he was deluded to imagine that he had created it.
Such a man would be with difficulty brought to surrender his prize.

Again, there was his love for me. 'Pater est, Pamphile;--difficile est.'
How was this vast conceit of a not unreal paternal love to be
encountered? The sense of honour and of decency might appeal to him
personally; would either of them get a hearing if he fancied them to be
standing in opposition to my dearest interests? I, unhappily, as the case
would be sure to present itself to him, appeared the living example of
his eminently politic career. After establishing me the heir of one of
the wealthiest of English commoners, would he be likely to forego any
desperate chance of ennobling me by the brilliant marriage? His dreadful
devotion to me extinguished the hope that he would, unless I should
happen to be particularly masterful in dealing with