your pleasure, and under any circumstances I
remember, what you appear to forget, that you are my grandfather.'

So saying, I followed the ladies. It was not the wisest of speeches, and
happened, Captain Bulsted informed me, to be delivered in my father's
manner, for the squire pronounced emphatically that he saw very little
Beltham in me. The right course would have been for me to ask him then
and there whether I had his consent to start for Germany. But I was the
sport of resentments and apprehensions; and, indeed, I should not have
gone. I could not go without some title beyond that of the heir of great
riches.

Janet kept out of my sight. I found myself strangely anxious to console
her: less sympathetic, perhaps, than desirous to pour out my sympathy in
her ear, which was of a very pretty shape, with a soft unpierced lobe.
We danced together at the Riversley Ball, given by the squire on the
night of my father's Ball in London. Janet complimented me upon having
attained wisdom. 'Now we get on well,' she said. 'Grandada only wants to
see us friendly, and feel that I am not neglected.'

The old man, a martyr to what he considered due to his favourite,
endured the horror of the Ball until suppertime, and kept his eyes on
us two. He forgot, or pretended to forget, my foreign engagement
altogether, though the announcement in the newspapers was spoken of by
Sir Roderick and Lady Echester and others.

'How do you like that?' he remarked to me, seeing her twirled away by
one of the young Rubreys.

'She seems to like it, sir,' I replied.

'Like it!' said he. 'In my day you wouldn't have caught me letting the
bloom be taken off the girl I cared for by a parcel o' scampish young
dogs. Right in their arms! Look at her build. She's strong; she's
healthy; she goes round like a tower. If you want a girl to look like a
princess!'

His eulogies were not undeserved. But she danced as lightly and happily
with Mr. Fred Rubrey as with Harry Richmond. I congratulated myself
on her lack of sentiment. Later, when in London, where Mlle. Jenny
Chassediane challenged me to perilous sarabandes, I wished that Janet
had ever so small a grain of sentiment, for a preservative to me.
Ottilia glowed high and distant; she sent me no message; her image did
not step between me and disorder. The whole structure of my idea of my
superior nature seemed to be crumbling to fragments; and beginning to
feel in despair that I was wretchedly like other