scarcely able to leave this chair without assistance, that I am some
broken-spirited dependent creature, without the courage or power to do
what I may think best for my own child. Still the power to hint a wish!
I hope so!'

'Pardon me,' returned Ralph, who thoroughly knew his man, and had taken
his ground accordingly; 'you do not hear me out. I was about to say that
your hinting a wish, even hinting a wish, would surely be equivalent to
commanding.'

'Why, of course it would,' retorted Mr Bray, in an exasperated tone. 'If
you don't happen to have heard of the time, sir, I tell you that there
was a time, when I carried every point in triumph against her mother's
whole family, although they had power and wealth on their side, by my
will alone.'

'Still,' rejoined Ralph, as mildly as his nature would allow him, 'you
have not heard me out. You are a man yet qualified to shine in society,
with many years of life before you; that is, if you lived in freer air,
and under brighter skies, and chose your own companions. Gaiety is
your element, you have shone in it before. Fashion and freedom for you.
France, and an annuity that would support you there in luxury, would
give you a new lease of life, would transfer you to a new existence. The
town rang with your expensive pleasures once, and you could blaze up
on a new scene again, profiting by experience, and living a little at
others' cost, instead of letting others live at yours. What is there on
the reverse side of the picture? What is there? I don't know which is
the nearest churchyard, but a gravestone there, wherever it is, and a
date, perhaps two years hence, perhaps twenty. That's all.'

Mr Bray rested his elbow on the arm of his chair, and shaded his face
with his hand.

'I speak plainly,' said Ralph, sitting down beside him, 'because I feel
strongly. It's my interest that you should marry your daughter to my
friend Gride, because then he sees me paid--in part, that is. I don't
disguise it. I acknowledge it openly. But what interest have you in
recommending her to such a step? Keep that in view. She might object,
remonstrate, shed tears, talk of his being too old, and plead that her
life would be rendered miserable. But what is it now?'

Several slight gestures on the part of the invalid showed that these
arguments were no more lost upon him, than the smallest iota of his
demeanour was upon Ralph.

'What is it now, I say,' pursued the wily usurer, 'or what has it