"Oh, your sneers don't touch me! You always had your humors; still I am willing to help a kinsman, and I will give you a chance if you like. What do you say to a rich young wife—none of your crooked sticks?"
"It's an awful remedy for one's financial disease, to mortgage one's self instead of one's property; still I suppose I'll have to come to it. Who is the proposed mortgagee?"
"My wife's sister."
"Oh!"
The tone of this "Oh!" was in some unaccountable way offensive to Colonel Ormonde. "Miss Liddell comes of a very good old county family I can tell you," he said, quickly; "a branch of the Somerset Liddells; and when I saw her last she was the making of an uncommon fine woman."
"But your wife was a Mrs. Liddell, was she not?"
"Yes. This girl is her sister-in-law, really, but Mrs. Ormonde looks on her as a sister."
"Hum! She has the cash? I suppose you know all about it?"
"Well, yes, you may be sure of sixty or seventy thousand, which would keep you going till Lord de Burgh joins the majority."
"Yes, that might do; so 'trot her out.'"