"I will be perfectly plain with you, my dear Robert," said Mr. Guyon, "frank as the day, all open and aboveboard. I won't disguise from you, I don't attempt to disguise it from myself, that perhaps there never was a man less fitted than I am to have been blessed with what would be a crowning solace to many men--a daughter." Streightley involuntarily started as these words met his ear; and Mr. Guyon noticed the start, but he did not betray himself, and proceeded. "I'm not a domestic man, and not cut out for domestic happiness. I believe my enemies call me a loose fish, and 'pon my soul I think they're right. I like my rubber and my club, and--in fact, my freedom. I'm a sort of claret-and-entrée butterfly, and was never intended for the roast-joint and bread-and-cheese menagé of respectability and home consumption. However, what was intended and what is are two very different things. I have a daughter, and--well, you're a man of the world, and I won't bore you with a father's maudlin praises of his child. She is--there, I was very near breaking into what I had just declared I would not do!--what I mean to say is, her future is my greatest care. I've been a man of the world myself, and I know all she will be exposed to, and, my dear Robert, I tremble when I think of it. I've only to refer to my own conscience to see what might be in store for her. Her poor mother--of whom she is the very image--was weak enough to marry me; and though--though I always treated her as a gentleman should treat his wife, by Jove! I know I--many shortcomings."
Here Mr. Guyon buried his face in a large white pocket-handkerchief; and Streightley, not knowing what to say or do, drummed vacantly on the table.
"You follow me, my dear boy? Of course, I knew you would," resumed Mr. Guyon after a momentary pause. "Now wait and hear the rest. A girl like Katharine, possessing--well, what I suppose even I may call many attractions--will necessarily receive a vast amount of admiration from all sorts of men; and it will be my duty--and a duty which I shall perform with the greatest strictness; she has no mother, you know, poor girl! and I must be doubly vigilant--to see that she does not get led away and tempted into any foolish alliance by any good-looking young fashionable fop with nothing but his good looks to recommend him. What my girl requires in a husband--for she is light and giddy, like the rest of her sex--is ballast, my dear Robert; a man of matured experience and not too young in years; one whom she could look up to, who could give her the position which her beauty, and--I may say her birth--entitle her to;--that's the sort of husband to whom alone I should be happy in giving my Katharine."
Mr. Guyon paused once more, and Streightley bowed again in an absent manner, his right hand all the time plucking at his chin.
"The--the ideal, if I may so call it, that I have just drawn by no means resembles the writer of a letter which I received this morning honouring me by a proposal for Katharine's hand." Streightley's arm dropped upon the table, and he leant forward with an eager gaze. "Yes, my dear Robert, the Goths are already in full march upon the--what d'ye call 'em?--Capitol; and it is under these circumstances that I have sent for you to ask your advice."
"You--you're very good," murmured Streightley; "and of course any thing that I can do--but I really scarcely see in such a matter as this--and without knowing--knowing any thing of the--the parties----"
"My dear Robert, you don't think I would have sent for you with the notion of making any half-confidences. You shall know every detail. The writer of this letter," pursued Mr. Guyon, producing a packet from his desk,--"of these two letters rather, for there is an enclosure for Katharine which I have not yet delivered--is a young man whom you may have seen with us--a Mr. Gordon Frere. A doosid good-looking, well-born, well-connected young fellow, who seems tremendously in earnest about it too," continued Mr. Guyon, balancing his trim gold eyeglasses on the bridge of his nose; "for he writes to me to say--to say that--there, I need not read his letter--the gist of it is that he's been down to his father, at some place in the country where he writes from, and his father, who is a member of the House, has promised to use his influence with Government to get him a decent berth. Now that's plucky and honourable--I like that, eh, Robert?"
"O yes, sir--very honourable indeed," said Streightley nervously. "I think you mentioned that you had not forwarded the enclosure to Miss Guyon?"
"Not yet,--no. I was desirous of having your opinion--as a man of business--on the proposal."
It had come at last then, this long-expected blow to that dream of future happiness in which, spite of his own better reasoning, he had dared to indulge. She would be wrested from him--be taken to the heart of that smooth-spoken dandy whom he had loathed from the first instant of seeing him. All her loveliness--ah, how he remembered each brilliant charm!--would go to grace the life of that silly fop. The blood rushed back to Robert Streightley's heart as he thought of all this; his teeth were clenched, his pallid lips trembled and shook, and he thought that if he had had Gordon Frere before him at that instant he could have killed him without remorse. For an instant his better feeling struggled with his passion--the struggle was short and sharp, but the passion was victorious; and he said, in a strange dry voice,