like the looks of it."

"Neither do I."

"Yes, but you see it looks as though she had been already set apart
for you especially."

"And pray, old man, what difference can that make, when I don't set
myself apart for any thing of the kind?"

Dacres sat in silence with a gloomy frown over his brow.

"Besides, are you aware, my boy, of the solemn fact that Biggs's
nieces are legion?" said Hawbury. "The man himself is an infernal old
bloke; and as to his nieces--heavens and earth!--old! old as
Methuselah; and as to this one, she must be a grandniece--a second
generation. She's not a true, full-blooded niece. Now the lady I refer
to was one of the original Biggs's nieces. There's no mistake whatever
about that, for I have it in black and white, under my mother's own
hand."

"Oh, she would select the best of them for you."

"No, she wouldn't. How do you know that?"

"There's no doubt about that."

"It depends upon what you mean by the best. The one _you_ call the
best might not seem so to _her_, and so on. Now I dare say she's
picked out for me a great, raw-boned, redheaded niece, with a nose
like a horse. And she expects me to marry a woman like that! with a
pace like a horse! Good Lord!"

And Hawbury leaned back, lost in the immensity of that one
overwhelming idea.

"Besides," said he, standing up, "I don't care if she was the angel
Gabriel. I don't want any of Biggs's nieces. I won't have them. By
Jove! And am I to be entrapped into a plan like that? I want Ethel.
And what's more, I will have her, or go without. The child-angel may
be the very identical one that my mother selected, and if you assert
that she is, I'll be hanged if I'll argue the point. I only say this,
that it doesn't alter my position in the slightest degree. I don't
want her. I won't have her. I don't want to see her. I don't care if
the whole of Biggs's nieces, in solemn conclave, with old Biggs at
their head, had formally discussed the whole matter, and finally
resolved unanimously that she should be mine. Good Lord, man! don't
you understand how it is? What the mischief do I care about any body?
Do you think I went through that fiery furnace for nothing? And what
do you suppose that life on the island meant? Is all that nothing? Did
you ever live on an island with the child-angel? Did you ever make a
raft for her and fly? Did you ever float down a river current between
banks burned black by raging fires, feeding her, soothing her,
comf