"Very well, father; I daresay I can get my living somewhere else, without
working much harder than I do here."

This open opposition on the girl's part made William Carley only the more
obstinately bent upon that marriage, which seemed to him such a brilliant
alliance, which opened up to him the prospect of a comfortable home for
his old age, where he might repose after his labours, and live upon the
fat of the land without toil or care. He had a considerable contempt for
the owner of Wyncomb Farm, whom he thought a poor creature both as a man
and a farmer; and he fancied that if his daughter married Stephen
Whitelaw, he might become the actual master of that profitable estate. He
could twist such a fellow as Stephen round his fingers, he told himself,
when invested with the authority of a father-in-law.

Mr. Whitelaw was a pale-faced little man of about five-and-forty years of
age; a man who had remained a bachelor to the surprise of his
neighbours, who fancied, perhaps, that the owner of a good house and a
comfortable income was in a manner bound by his obligation to society to
take to himself a partner with whom to share these advantages. He had
remained unmarried, giving no damsel ground for complaint by any delusive
attentions, and was supposed to have saved a good deal of money, and to
be about the richest man in those parts, with the exception of the landed
gentry.

He was by no means an attractive person in this the prime of his manhood.
He had a narrow mean-looking face, with sharp features, and a pale sickly
complexion, which looked as if he had spent his life in some close London
office rather than in the free sweet air of his native fields. His hair
was of a reddish tint, very sleek and straight, and always combed with