He
could twist such a fellow as Stephen round his fingers, he told himself,
when invested with the authority of a father-in-law.

Mr. Whitelaw was a pale-faced little man of about five-and-forty years of
age; a man who had remained a bachelor to the surprise of his
neighbours, who fancied, perhaps, that the owner of a good house and a
comfortable income was in a manner bound by his obligation to society to
take to himself a partner with whom to share these advantages. He had
remained unmarried, giving no damsel ground for complaint by any delusive
attentions, and was supposed to have saved a good deal of money, and to
be about the richest man in those parts, with the exception of the landed
gentry.

He was by no means an attractive person in this the prime of his manhood.
He had a narrow mean-looking face, with sharp features, and a pale sickly
complexion, which looked as if he had spent his life in some close London
office rather than in the free sweet air of his native fields. His hair
was of a reddish tint, very sleek and straight, and always combed with
extreme precision upon each side of his narrow forehead; and he had
scanty whiskers of the same unpopular hue, which he was in the habit of
smoothing with a meditative air upon his sallow cheeks with the knobby
fingers of his bony hand. He was of a rather nervous temperament,
inclined to silence, like his big burly friend, William Carley, and had a
deprecating doubtful way of expressing his opinion at all times. In spite
of this humility of manner, however, he cherished a secret pride in his
superior wealth, and was apt to remind his associates, upon occasion,
that he could buy up any one of them without feeling the investment.

After having attained the discreet age of forty-five without being a
victim to the tender passion, Mr. Whitelaw might reasonably have supposed
himself exempt from the weakness so common to mankind. But such
self-gratulation, had he indulged in it, would have been premature; for
after having been a visitor at the Grange, and boon-companion of the
bailiff's for some ten years, it slowly dawned upon him that Ellen Carley
was a very pretty girl, and that he would have her for his wife, and no
other. Her brisk off-hand manner had a kind of charm for his slow
apathetic nature; her rosy brunette face, with its bright black eyes and
flashing teeth, seemed to him the perfection of beauty. But he was not an
impetuous lover. He took his time about the