dirty work.'

'Just now, sir, you called it corrupting with a bribe,' muttered Mr
Coxe.

Mr. Gibson took no notice of this speech, but went on,--'Inducing one
of my servants to risk her place, without offering her the slightest
equivalent, by begging her to convey a letter clandestinely to my
daughter--a mere child.'

'Miss Gibson, sir, is nearly seventeen! I heard you say so only the
other day,' said Mr. Coxe, aged twenty. Again Mr. Gibson ignored the
remark.

'A letter which you were unwilling to have seen by her father, who had
tacitly trusted to your honour, by receiving you as an inmate of his
house. Your father's son--I know Major Coxe well--ought to have come to
me, and have said out openly, "Mr. Gibson, I love--or I fancy that I
love--your daughter; I do not think it right to conceal this from you,
although unable to earn a penny; and with no prospect of an unassisted
livelihood, even for myself, for several years, I shall not say a word
about my feelings--or fancied feelings--to the very young lady
herself." That is what your father's son ought to have said; if,
indeed, a couple of grains of reticent silence would not have been
better still.'

'And if I had said it, sir--perhaps I ought to have said it,' said poor
Mr. Coxe, in a hurry of anxiety, 'what would have been your answer?
Would you have sanctioned my passion, sir?'