ask your advice in
this too."

Lord Lilburne took the letter, and glanced over it with the rapid eye of
a man accustomed to seize in everything the main gist and pith.

"An offer to my pretty niece--Mr. Spencer--requires no fortune--his
uncle will settle all his own--(poor silly old man!) All! Why that's
only L1000. a year. You don't think much of this, eh? How my sister can
even ask you about it puzzles me."

"Why, you see, Lilburne," said Mr. Beaufort, rather embarrassed, "there
is no question of fortune--nothing to go out of the family; and, really,
Arthur is so expensive, and, if she were to marry well, I could not give
her less than fifteen or twenty thousand pounds."

"Aha!--I see--every man to his taste: here a daughter--there a dowry.
You are devilish fond of money, Beaufort. Any pleasure in avarice,--eh?"

Mr. Beaufort coloured very much at the remark and the question, and,
forcing a smile, said,--

"You are severe. But you don't know what it is to be father to a young
man."

"Then a great many young women have told me sad fibs! But you are right
in your sense of the phrase. No, I never had an heir apparent, thank
Heaven! No children imposed upon me by law--natural enemies, to count
the years between the bells that ring for their majority, and those that
will toll for my decease. It is enough for me that I have a brother and
a sister--that my brother's son will inherit my estates--and that, in
the meantime, he grudges me every tick in that clock. What then? If he
had been my uncle, I had done the same. Meanwhile, I see as little of
him as good breeding will permit. On the face of a rich man's heir is
written the rich man's memento mori! But revenons a nos moutons. Yes, if
you give your daughter no fortune, your death will be so much the more
profitable to Arthur!"

"Really, you take such a very odd view of the matter," said Mr.
Beaufort, exceedingly shocked. "But I see you don't like the marriage;
perhaps you are right."

"Indeed, I have no choice in the matter; I never interfere between
father and children. If I had children myself, I will, however, tell
you, for your comfort, that they might marry exactly as they pleased--I
would never thwart them. I should be too happy to get them out of my
way. If they married well, one would have all the credit; if ill, one
would have an excuse to disown them. As I said before, I dislike poor
relations. Though if Camilla lives at the Lakes when she is married, i