pleaded Gilbert; "and what worldly-wise people call a good home, is not
always a happy one. It's a hard thing for a young woman to marry against
her inclination."

"Humph!" muttered the bailiff in a surly tone. "It's a harder thing for
her to marry a pauper, I should think, and to bring a regiment of
children into the world, always wanting shoes and stockings. But you're a
bachelor, you see, Mr. Fenton, and can't be expected to know what shoes
and stockings are. Now there happens to be a friend of mine--a steady,
respectable, middle-aged man--who worships the ground my girl walks on,
and could make her mistress of as good a house as any within twenty miles
of this, and give a home to her father in his old age, into the bargain;
for I'm only a servant here, and it can't be expected that I am to go on
toiling and slaving about this place for ever. I don't say but what I've
saved a few pounds, but I haven't saved enough to keep me out of the
workhouse."

This seemed to Gilbert rather a selfish manner of looking at a daughter's
matrimonial prospects, and he ventured to hint as much in a polite way.
But the bailiff was immovable.

"What a young woman wants is a good home," he said decisively; "whether
she has the sense to know it herself, or whether she hasn't, that's what
she's got to look for in life."

Gilbert had not spent many evenings at the Grange before he had the
honour of being introduced to the estimable middle-aged suitor, whose
claims Mr. Carley was always setting forth to his daughter. He saw
Stephen Whitelaw, and that individual's colourless expressionless
countenance, redeemed from total blankness only by the cunning visible in
the small grey eyes, impressed him with instant distrust and dislike.

"God forbid that frank warm-hearted girl should ever be sacrificed to
such a fellow as this," he said to himself, as he sat on the opposite
side of the hearth, smoking his cigar, and meditatively contemplating Mr.
Whitelaw conversing in his slow solemn fashion with the man who was so
eager to be his father-in-law.

In the course of that first evening of their acquaintance, Gilbert was
surprised to see how often Stephen Whitelaw looked at him, with a
strangely-attentive expression, that had something furtive in it, some
hidden meaning, as it seemed to him. Whenever Gilbert spoke, the farmer
looked up at him, always with the same sharp inquisitive glance, the same
cunning twinkle in his small eyes. And every ti