a peremptory stop to
anything like a love affair between my son and your niece."

"I have not the least objection in life. If there is such a love
affair, put a stop to it--that is, if you have the power."

Here the doctor was doubtless imprudent. But he had begun to think
that he had yielded sufficiently to the lady; and he had begun to
resolve, also, that though it would not become him to encourage even
the idea of such a marriage, he would make Lady Arabella understand
that he thought his niece quite good enough for her son, and that
the match, if regarded as imprudent, was to be regarded as equally
imprudent on both sides. He would not suffer that Mary and her heart
and feelings and interest should be altogether postponed to those
of the young heir; and, perhaps, he was unconsciously encouraged in
this determination by the reflection that Mary herself might perhaps
become a young heiress.

"It is my duty," said Lady Arabella, repeating her words with even a
stronger de Courcy intonation; "and your duty also, Dr Thorne."

"My duty!" said he, rising from his chair and leaning on the table
with the two thigh-bones. "Lady Arabella, pray understand at once,
that I repudiate any such duty, and will have nothing whatever to do
with it."

"But you do not mean to say that you will encourage this unfortunate
boy to marry your niece?"

"The unfortunate boy, Lady Arabella--whom, by the by, I regard as
a very fortunate young man--is your son, not mine. I shall take no
steps about his marriage, either one way or the other."

"You think it right, then, that your niece should throw herself in
his way?"

"Throw herself in his way! What would you say if I came up to
Greshamsbury, and spoke to you of your daughters in such language?
What would my dear friend Mr Gresham say, if some neighbour's wife
should come and so speak to him? I will tell you what he would say:
he would quietly beg her to go back to her own home and meddle only
with her own matters."

This was dreadful to Lady Arabella. Even Dr Thorne had never before
dared thus to lower her to the level of common humanity, and liken
her to any other wife in the country-side. Moreover, she was not
quite sure whether he, the parish doctor, was not desiring her, the
earl's daughter, to go home and mind her own business. On this first
point, however, there seemed to be no room for doubt, of which she
gave herself the benefit.

"It would not become me to argue with you,