due to children precludes unrestrained confidence; and there is not
that sense of permanent fellowship in a daughter which a man has in a
wife,--any day a stranger may appear and carry her off from him. At
all events Leopold did not own in Cecilia the softening influence to
which he had yielded in her mother. He was fond of her, proud of her,
indulgent to her; but the indulgence had its set limits. Whatever she
asked solely for herself he granted; whatever she wished for matters
under feminine control--the domestic household, the parish school, the
alms-receiving poor--obtained his gentlest consideration. But when
she had been solicited by some offending out-of-door dependant or some
petty defaulting tenant to use her good offices in favour of the
culprit, Mr. Travers checked her interference by a firm "No," though
uttered in a mild accent, and accompanied with a masculine aphorism to
the effect that "there would be no such things as strict justice and
disciplined order in the world if a man yielded to a woman's pleadings
in any matter of business between man and man." From this it will be
seen that Mr. Lethbridge had overrated the value of Cecilia's alliance
in the negotiation respecting Mrs. Bawtrey's premium and shop.



CHAPTER III.

IF, having just perused what has thus been written on the biographical
antecedents and mental characteristics of Leopold Travers, you, my
dear reader, were to be personally presented to that gentleman as he
now stands, the central figure of the group gathered round him, on his
terrace, you would probably be surprised,--nay, I have no doubt you
would say to yourself, "Not at all the sort of man I expected." In
that slender form, somewhat below the middle height; in that fair