He blushed up to his eyes, perfectly understanding the meaning of her words; and, knowing that he had not deserved them, he was almost angry.  ’If you will make inquiry I think you will find that I have so far succeeded as to justify you in hoping that I may be able to marry and settle myself in my own country.’

‘You don’t know my daughter at all.’

‘Very little.’

’It is quite out of the question.  She is very young, and such a thing has never occurred to her.  And we are not the same sort of people.’

’Why not, Mrs. Bolton?  Your husband and my father have been intimate friends for a great many years.  It is not as though I had taken up the idea only yesterday.  It has been present with me, comforting me, during all my work, for the last five years.  I know all your daughter’s features as though she had been my constant companion.’  The lady shivered and almost trembled at this profanation of her child’s name.  It was trouble to her that one so holy should ever have been thought about by one so unholy.  ’Of course I do not ask for anything at present;—­but will you not consult your husband as to the propriety of allowing her to make my acquaintance?’

‘I shall tell my husband, of course.’

‘And will repeat to him what I say?’

’I shall tell him,—­as I should any other most wild proposition that might be made to me.  But I am quite sure that he will be very angry.’

‘Angry! why should he be angry?’

‘Because——­’ Then she stopped.

’I do not think, Mrs. Bolton, that there can be any cause for anger.  If I were a beggar, if I were below her in position, if I had not means to keep a wife,—­even if I were a stranger to his name, he might be angry.  But I do not think he can be angry with me, now, because, in the most straightforward way, I come to the young lady’s parents and tell them that I love their child.  Is it a disgrace to me that of all whom I have seen I think her to be the loveliest and best?  Her father may reject me; but he will be very unreasonable if he is angry with me.’

She could not tell him about the dove and the kite, or the lamb and the wolf.  She could not explain to him that he was a sinner, unregenerated, a wild man in her estimation, a being of quite another kind than herself, and therefore altogether unfitted to be the husband of her girl!  Her husband, no doubt, could do all this—­if he would.  But then she too had her own skeleton in her own cupboard.  She was not quite assured of her own husband’s regeneration.  He went to church regularly, and read his Bible, and said his prayers.  But she feared,—­she was almost sure,—­that he liked the bank-books better than his Bible.  That he would reject this offer from John Caldigate, she did not doubt.  She had always heard her husband speak of the man with disapprobation and scorn.  She had heard the whole story of Davis and the Newmarket debts.  She had heard, too, the man’s subsequent