"Now, my dear sir, there your usual sound common-sense has for once deserted you. Is it likely that, when once you are my father-in-law, I should proclaim a gentleman whose connexion with me I had taken so much pains to make public, as--pardon me--as a felon?"
Mr. Townshend cowered back in his chair, as Simnel, leaning forward to impart additional earnestness to his manner, uttered these last words. For a minute or two there was a dead silence; then the old-man, with a terrible effort at collecting himself, asked, "When do you require an answer to this demand?"
"An answer? Immediately! I cannot conceive that there can be any question as to the answer to be returned. I am sure that you, my good sir, could not be mad enough to object to what is, under all the circumstances, really a very reasonable proposition. I merely want you to pass your word to agree to what I have placed before you, and we will then settle the time for carrying the arrangement into effect."
"What delay will you grant me?"
"Now, upon my word, Mr. Townshend," said Simnel, in a semi-offended tone, "this is scarcely polite. You ask for delay, as though you were ordered for execution, instead of having what might have been a very unpleasant affair settled in a thoroughly satisfactory manner."
"You must pardon me, sir," said Mr. Townshend; "I am an old man now. I am broken with illness; and this interview has been too much for me. Pray end it as speedily as possible." Indeed he looked as wan and haggard as a corpse.
"Poor devil!" thought Simnel, "I pity him thoroughly. But there must be no shrinking now, and no delay, or that Schröder-Beresford business may fall through; and then--" "I must get you to act at once, then, Mr. Townshend, if you please," he said aloud. "Your daughter had better come to you at once, and we can then be married in a month or six weeks' time."
Mr. Townshend bowed his head. "As you please, sir; perhaps you will see me again to-morrow, or the day after. Just now I can settle nothing; my head is gone." And so the interview ended.
"I must keep him to it, by Jove!" soliloquised Mr. Simnel; "and pretty tight too, or it will fall through yet. He looked horribly ill, and he'll be going off the hooks without any recognition or any settlement, and then we should be neatly in the hole; for, of course, not one single soul would believe the story of Kitty's birth, though told by me and sworn to by Scadgers. And now I must let her know the whole truth, and ask for the reward. It's been a hard fight, and it isn't won yet."