stant from Paris, Jasper
returned to London, intent upon seeing Darrell himself; and, should the
father-in-law still defer articles of peace, Jasper believed that he
could have no trouble in raising a present supply upon such an El Dorado
of future expectations. Darrell at once consented to see Jasper, not at
his own house, but at his solicitor's. Smothering all opposing disgust,
the proud gentleman deemed this condescension essential to the clear and
definite understanding of those resolves upon which depended the worldly
station and prospects of the wedded pair.

When Jasper was shown into Mr. Gotobed's office, Darrell was alone,
standing near the hearth, and by a single quiet gesture repelled that
tender rush towards his breast which Jasper had elaborately prepared;
and thus for the first time the two men saw each other, Darrell
perhaps yet more resentfully mortified while recognising those personal
advantages in the showy profligate which had rendered a daughter of his
house so facile a conquest: Jasper (who had chosen to believe that a
father-in-law so eminent must necessarily be old and broken) shocked
into the most disagreeable surprise by the sight of a man still young,
under forty, with a countenance, a port, a presence, that in any
assemblage would have attracted the general gaze from his own brilliant
self, and looking altogether as unfavourable an object, whether for
pathos or for post-obits, as unlikely to breathe out a blessing or to
give up the ghost, as the worst brute of a father-in-law could possibly
be. Nor were Darrell's words more comforting than his aspect.

"Sir, I have consented to see you, partly that you may learn from my own
lips once for all that I admit no man's right to enter my family without
my consent, and that consent you will never receive; and partly that,
thus knowing each other by sight, each may know the man it becomes
him most to avoid. The lady who is now your wife is entitled by my
marriage-settlement to the reversion of a small fortune at my death;
nothing more from me is she likely to inherit. As I have no desire that
she to whom I once gave the name of daughter should be dependent wholly
on yourself for bread, my solicitor will inform you on what conditions
I am willing, during my life, to pay the interest of the sum which will
pass to your wife at my death. Sir, I return to your hands the letters
that lady has addressed to me, and which, it is easy to perceive, were
written