“A thousand thanks. I can’t say how grateful I am. You certainly are the kindest and cleverest person in the world.”
“You can’t think worse of the world’s cleverness and kindness than I do,” was Lilburne’s rather ambiguous answer to the compliment. “But why does my sister want to see you?”
“Oh, I forgot!—here is her letter. I was going to 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!”