consent, were but too ready to withdraw it on the plea of Mr.
Newell's non-appearance. Mrs. Newell, on the last edge of tension,
had confided to Garnett that the Morningfields were "being nasty";
and he could picture the whole powerful clan, on both sides of the
Channel, arrayed in a common resolve to exclude poor Hermione from
their ranks. The very inequality of the contest stirred his blood,
and made him vow that in this case at least the sins of the parents
should not be visited on the children. In his talk with the young
secretary he had obtained some glimpses of Baron Schenkelderff's
past which fortified this resolve. The Baron, at one time a familiar
figure in a much-observed London set, had been mixed up in an ugly
money-lending business ending in suicide, which had excluded him
from the society most accessible to his race. His alliance with Mrs.
Newell was doubtless a desperate attempt at rehabilitation, a
forlorn hope on both sides, but likely to be an enduring tie because
it represented, to both partners, their last chance of escape from
social extinction. That Hermione's marriage was a mere stake in
their game did not in the least affect Garnett's view of its
urgency. If on their part it was a sordid speculation, to her it had
the freshness of the first wooing. If it made of her a mere pawn in
their hands, it would put her, so Garnett hoped, beyond farther risk
of such base uses; and to achieve this had become a necessity to
him.

The sense that, if he lost sight of Mr. Newell, the latter might not
easily be found again, nerved Garnett to hold his ground in spite of
the resistance he encountered; and he tried to put the full force of
his plea into the tone with which he cried: "Ah, you don't know your
daughter!"