oung
creature who forfeited not a particle of her ladyship while she made
herself our comrade in talk and frolic.

Janet and I walked part of the way to the station with Temple, who had
to catch an early train, and returning--the song of skylarks covering
us--joined hands, having our choice between nothing to say, and the
excess; perilous both.

CHAPTER XLIV. MY FATHER IS MIRACULOUSLY RELIEVED BY FORTUNE

My grandfather had a gratification in my success, mingled with a
transparent jealousy of the chief agent in procuring it. He warned me
when I left him that he was not to be hoodwinked: he must see the money
standing in my name on the day appointed. His doubts were evident, but
he affected to be expectant. Not a word of Sarkeld could be spoken.
My success appeared to be on a more visionary foundation the higher I
climbed.

Now Jorian DeWitt had affirmed that the wealthy widow Lady Sampleman was
to be had by my father for the asking. Placed as we were, I regarded the
objections to his alliance with her in a mild light. She might lend me
the money to appease the squire; that done, I would speedily repay it.
I admitted, in a letter to my aunt Dorothy, the existing objections: but
the lady had long been enamoured of him, I pleaded, and he was past
the age for passionate affection, and would infallibly be courteous and
kind. She was rich. We might count on her to watch over him carefully.
Of course, with such a wife, he would sink to a secondary social sphere;
was it to be regretted if he did? The letter was a plea for my own
interests, barely veiled.

At the moment of writing it, and moreover when I treated my father with
especial coldness, my heart was far less warm in the contemplation of
its pre-eminent aim than when I was suffering him to endanger it, almost
without a protest. Janet and a peaceful Riversley, and a life of quiet
English distinction, beckoned to me visibly, and not hatefully. The
image of Ottilia conjured up pictures of a sea of shipwrecks, a scene
of immeasurable hopelessness. Still, I strove toward that. My strivings
were against my leanings, and imagining the latter, which involved no
sacrifice of the finer sense of honour, to be in the direction of
my lower nature, I repelled them to preserve a lofty aim that led me
through questionable ways.

'Can it be you, Harry,' my aunt Dorothy's reply ran (I had anticipated
her line of reasoning, though not her warmth), 'who advise him to this
marr