'Yes,' replied her father, with growing irritation, 'how many do you expect of any kind, as society goes now-a-days? Consider this well—or why consider at all?—but accept his offer for your own sake and mine.'
'But without love, papa?' said the girl, softly.
'You can't live on that, like the æsthetic bride in Punch, on her teapot,' exclaimed Sir Ranald. 'In asking you to marry him, I rather ask you to marry his house in Belgravia, his place here in Hampshire, his equipages, and family jewels, as I suppose he calls them.'
'Oh, papa,' said Alison, proudly and reproachfully, 'is it you, Cheyne of Essilmont, who suggest this to me?'
'Yes—I, Cheyne of Essilmont and that ilk—the bankrupt and the beggar,' he replied, with a burst of impressible bitterness.
'Papa, how can you, so proud of race, go in for vulgar mammon worship so unblushingly?'
'My poverty, but not my will, consents.'
'I thought daughters were sold only in Circassia.'
'Not at all, they sell too in Tyburnia and Belgravia to the highest bidder, and surely with all he can give you, all that he can surround us with, you might be able to tolerate him as a husband.'
But Alison could only think of Bevil Goring, and interlaced her fingers tightly beneath the tablecloth.