"Well, don't you now see a way to force your cousin to sell the
lands?"

"At the price of Angela's hand?"

"Precisely."

Philip walked up and down the room in thought. Though, as the reader
may remember, he had himself, but a month before, been base enough to
suggest that his daughter should use her eyes to forward his projects,
he had never, in justice to him be it said, dreamt of forcing her into
a marriage in every way little less than unnatural. His idea of
responsibility towards his daughter was, as regards sins of omission,
extremely lax, but there were some of commission that he did not care
to face. Certain fears and memories oppressed him too much to allow of
it.

"Lady Bellamy," he said, presently, "you have known my cousin George
intimately for many years, and are probably sufficiently acquainted
with his habits of life to know that such a marriage would be an
infamy."

"Many a man who has been wild in his youth makes a good husband," she
answered, quietly.

"The more I think of it," went on Philip, excitedly, after the fashion
of one who would lash himself into a passion, "the more I see the
utter impossibility of any such thing, and I must say that I wonder at
your having undertaken such an errand. On the one hand, there is a
young girl who, though I do not, from force of circumstances, see much
of myself, is, I believe, as good as she is handsome----"

"And on the other," broke in Lady Bellamy, ironically, "are the
Isleworth estates."

"And on the other," went on Philip, without paying heed to her remark
--"I am going to speak plainly, Lady Bellamy--is a man utterly devoid
of the foundations of moral character, whose appearance is certainly
against him, who I have got reason to know is not to be trusted, and
who is old enough to be her father, and her cousin to boot--and you
ask me to forward such a marriage as this! I will have nothing to do
with it; my responsibilities as a father forbid it. It would be the
wickedest thing I have ever done to put the girl into the power of
such a man."

Lady Bellamy burst into a low peal of laughter; she never laughed
aloud. She thought that it was now time to throw him a little off his
balance.

"Forgive me," she said, with her sweetest smile, "but you must admit
that there is something rather ludicrous in hearing the hero of the
great Maria Lee scandal talking about moral character, and the father
who detests his daughter so much that he fears to look h