'There is nothing in this world like riches,' exclaimed Sir Ranald, glancing at the unopened blue envelopes, and tightening the silk cords of his sorely frayed dressing-gown. 'What riches give us let us first inquire.'
'Meat, fire, and clothes. What more? Meat, clothes, and fire,' said Alison, with a sickly smile.
'Alison—Miss Cheyne,' said her father, with increasing asperity. 'This offer of marriage is a serious matter, and not to be dismissed thus, by a quip or apt quotation.'
'You admit that it is apt?'
'I admit nothing—save that Cadbury has talked this matter over with me before.'
'I suspected as much,' said Alison, bitterly.
'Thus, if you marry him, I know that besides making noble settlements upon you he will—by a scrape of his pen—clear off nearly all the fatal encumbrances on our Scottish property; and I shall die, in old age—as I lived till ruin overtook me—Cheyne of Essilmont and that ilk.'
'And when you die, papa—' Alison began, in a broken voice.
'The estate becomes yours and his—it is all one.'
('And I have promised to wait for Bevil!' thought the girl in her heart.)