Sir Harry¹, before he had left Humblethwaite for London in October, had heard enough of his cousin's sins to make him sure that the match must be opposed with all his authority. Indeed he had so felt from the first moment in which George had begun to tell him of what had occurred at Airey Force. He had never thought that George Hotspur would make a fitting husband for his daughter. But, without so thinking, he had allowed his mind to dwell upon the outside advantages of the connection, dreaming of a fitness which he knew did not exist, till he had vacillated, and the evil thing had come upon him. When the danger was so close upon him to make him see what it was, to force him to feel what would be the misery² threatened to his daughter, to teach him to realize his own duty, he condemned³ himself bitterly for his own weakness. Could any duty which he owed to the world be so high or so holy as that which was due from him to his child? He almost hated his name and title and position as he thought of the evil that he had already done. Had his cousin George been in no close succession to the title, would he have admitted a man of whom he knew so much ill, and of whom he had never heard any good, within his park palings? And then he could not but acknowledge to himself that by asking such a one to his house,—a man such as this young cousin who was known to be the heir to the title,—he had given his daughter special reason to suppose that she might regard him as a fitting suitor for her hand. She of course had known,—had felt as keenly as he had felt, for was she not a Hotspur?—that she would be true to her family by combining her property and the title, and that by yielding to such a marriage she would be doing a family duty, unless there were reasons against it stronger than those connected with his name. But as to those other reasons, must not her father and her mother know better than she could know? When she found that the man was made welcome both in town and country, was it not natural that she should suppose that there were no stronger reasons? All this Sir Harry felt, and blamed himself and determined⁴ that though he must oppose his daughter and make her understand that the hope of such a marriage must be absolutely abandoned, it would be his duty to be very tender with her. He had sinned against her already, in that he had vacillated and had allowed that handsome but

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