'Dislike! The proverb has it that a woman's dislike is only love turned inside out; and he loves you so! Think of his coronet.'
'A new one—the gilt not even worn by time—a parvenu coronet.'
'Well,' said her father, impatiently, 'it will be old in time; and does not the land teem with parvenu baronets? They are thick as blackberries now!'
And Alison was thankful when he dropped asleep, and she was left to her own aching thoughts, and released from the hateful subject for a time.
When a man of Cadbury's age and proclivities conceives a fancy for a girl, he is usually terribly in earnest about it; but 'of that delicious agony—that glorious fear which makes pallid the face of the lover—the void in life which must be filled up by a beloved woman—what did he know?'
Nothing—or what had he ever known, old vaurien as he was?
In short, he came now, not to watch or hope for recovery, but to learn how ill Sir Ranald was becoming—the sooner the latter was gone the better for his schemes. The baronet had altered greatly for the worse in his mysterious and complicated ailment, and the doctors who came—and, thanks to the birthday gift of Alison, she had secured the best medical attendance—shook their heads gravely when they saw him; but not in her presence, as, with professional humanity, they wished to spare the poor girl any unnecessary pain.
Cadbury often reflected with genuine anger on how his plans for separating Alison from her father on the Continent, that he might both compromise and have her at his mercy, had failed; and that he had barely won, by any pretence, even her gratitude. He had spent 'a devil of a lot of money—even thousands one way or other,' and was no nearer his end than before—fair means or foul.
He had, moreover, been dreadfully insulted at the Hôtel St. Antoine, 'by that cad Goring,' and even put in terror of his precious life! And were all these to go for nothing?
Never, perhaps, since Time was born did a coward forgive the man who unmasked, affronted him, or did him dishonour in every way; thus more than ever was Cadbury rancorous at Bevil Goring, and resolved to revenge himself, through the means of Alison Cheyne, if he could.