air.

The young man looked at him with curiosity and interest.

"Plague take it all! her mother, if she has one, could manage this matter
so much better than I can," muttered the banker, as he poured out a glass
of wine and drank it. "Well, Lord Arondelle--I will give myself the
pleasure of calling you so while we are _tete-a-tete_ 'over the
walnuts and wine.' Lord Arondelle, there is my daughter; what do you
think of her?" he demanded, bending down his gray brows and fixing his
keen blue eyes scrutinizingly upon the young man's face which flushed at
the suddenness of the question. But he quickly recovered himself, and
replied in a low, reverent tone:

"I think Miss Levison the loveliest young creature I have ever had the
happiness to know."

"You do! So do _I_! I think so too. And the man who gets my girl to
wife will get a pearl of price."

"I truly believe that," said the young man, with an involuntary sigh.

"That is right! Ahem! Bother it! a woman could do this so much better
than such a blundering old fellow as I! Well, there! Salome has, in the
three years since her first entrance into society, refused half a score
of eligible men. She is, and always has been, perfectly free from any
such engagement. If you are equally free, my dear marquis--(If I could
only be her mother for three seconds)--Ahem! if you are equally free,
and if you admire my girl as you say you do, and if you can win her
affections--she--she shall be yours, and I will settle Lone upon her.
There, her mother would have done this better, I know. So much better
that you would have proposed to my daughter without ever dreaming that
the suggestion came from our side. But as for me, I have flung my girl
at your head, nothing less!" grumbled the banker.

"My dear Sir Lemuel," said the young man, with some emotion, as he left
his seat and came and stood by the banker's chair, leaning affectionately
over him; "when I first met your lovely daughter, I was so deeply
impressed by her rare sweetness, gentleness, intelligence--ah! Heaven
knows what it was! It was something more than all these. In a word, I was
so deeply impressed by her perfect loveliness, that had I been as really
the heir of Lone as I was the Marquis of Arondelle, I should at once have
cultivated her further acquaintance, and, before this, have laid my heart
and hand, titles and estates, at her feet."

"Well, well, my boy? Well, my dear lad, why didn't you do it?" inquired
the bank