"Empeche the fiddlestick! You don't know Lucretia. There are many
girls, indeed, who might not be trusted near any handsome flute-playing
spark, with black eyes and white teeth; but Lucretia is not one of those;
she has spirit and ambition that would never stoop to a mesalliance; she
has the mind and will of a queen,--old Queen Bess, I believe."

"That is saying much for her talent, sir; but if so, Heaven help her
intended! I am duly grateful for the blessings you propose me!"

Despite his anger, the old gentleman could not help smiling.

"Why, to confess the truth, she is hard to manage; but we men of the
world know how to govern women, I hope,--much more how to break in a girl
scarce out of her teens. As for this fancy of yours, it is sheer folly:
Lucretia knows my mind. She has seen her mother's fate; she has seen her
sister an exile from my house. Why? For no fault of hers, poor thing,
but because she is the child of disgrace, and the mother's sin is visited
on her daughter's head. I am a good-natured man, I fancy, as men go; but
I am old-fashioned enough to care for my race. If Lucretia demeaned
herself to love, to encourage, that lad, why, I would strike her from my
will, and put your name where I have placed hers."

"Sir," said Vernon, gravely, and throwing aside all affectation of
manner, "this becomes serious; and I have no right even to whisper a
doubt by which it now seems I might benefit. I think it imprudent, if
you wish Miss Clavering to regard me impartially as a suitor to her hand,
to throw her, at her age, in the way of a man far superior to myself, and
to most men, in personal advantages,--a man more of her own years, well
educated, well mannered, with no evidence of his inferior birth in his
appearance or his breeding. I have not the least ground for supposing