Dacres sat in silence with a gloomy frown over his brow.

"Besides, are you aware, my boy, of the solemn fact that Biggs's
nieces are legion?" said Hawbury. "The man himself is an infernal old
bloke; and as to his nieces--heavens and earth!--old! old as
Methuselah; and as to this one, she must be a grandniece--a second
generation. She's not a true, full-blooded niece. Now the lady I refer
to was one of the original Biggs's nieces. There's no mistake whatever
about that, for I have it in black and white, under my mother's own
hand."

"Oh, she would select the best of them for you."

"No, she wouldn't. How do you know that?"

"There's no doubt about that."

"It depends upon what you mean by the best. The one _you_ call the
best might not seem so to _her_, and so on. Now I dare say she's
picked out for me a great, raw-boned, redheaded niece, with a nose
like a horse. And she expects me to marry a woman like that! with a
pace like a horse! Good Lord!"

And Hawbury leaned back, lost in the immensity of that one
overwhelming idea.

"Besides," said he, standing up, "I don't care if she was the angel
Gabriel. I don't want any of Biggs's nieces. I won't have them. By
Jove! And am I to be entrapped into a plan like that? I want Ethel.
And what's more, I will have her, or go without. The child-angel may