“Considering my own father was a doctor,” cried Harold, rather hotly.

“Not a mere doctor.  A man of science, of world-wide repute, is not like a general practitioner, with a red lamp and an apothecary’s shop, where he makes up—­”

“Pills?” said Harold, again.  He was throwing down the gauntlet indeed.  Mrs. Purling had never known him like this before.

“Leave the room, Harold.  I decline to speak to you further, or again, unless you appear in a more obedient and decorous frame of mind.”

That Mrs. Purling was what she was, the chances of her life and her father were principally to blame.  He had begun life as an errand-boy, and ended it as a millionnaire; but long before he ended he had forgotten the beginning.  He had a sort of notion that he belonged to one of the old families in the county wherein he had bought wide estates, and he himself styled his only daughter “the heiress of the Purlings,” as if there had been Purlings back for generations, and he was the last, not the first, of his race.  It was he who had indoctrinated her with ideas of her own importance; and these same views had taken so strong a hold of him that he found it quite impossible to mate his daughter according to his mind.  He was ambitious, as was natural to a nouveau riche; wide awake, or he would not have made so much money.  Not one of the crowds of suitors who came forward was exactly to his taste.  He would have preferred a man of title, but the peers who were not penniless were too proud; and the best baronet was an aged bankrupt, who had been twice through the courts, and enjoyed an indifferent name.  It was strange that Isabel did not cut the Gordian knot, and choose for herself; but she was a dutiful daughter, and little less cautious than her father.  In the midst of it all he was called away on some particular business of his own—­to another world—­and Isabel was left alone, past thirty, and unmarried still.

The role of single blessedness may be charming to a man of means, but it is often extremely irksome to an heiress in her own right.  Miss Purling was like a pigeon that escapes from the inclosure at a match—­an aim for every gun around.  Great ladies took her up, as a kindness to their younger sons; briefless barristers, with visions of the Woolsack, besought her to help them to the first step—­a seat in the House; clergymen with great views prayed her to join them in some stupendous charitable work, that must win for them the lawn-sleeves; more than one impecunious soldier pleaded with her for their tailors, whose bills without her help they were quite unable to pay.  She seemed a common prey, fair game for every hand.  This developed in her an undue amount of suspicion and a certain hardness of heart.  She began to doubt whether there was one disinterested man in the whole world.