walk with her? You shall go down on your knees to her and beg her to
give you her arm for a walk. By God! you shall, now, here, on the spot,
or off you go to your German princess, with your butler's legacy, and
nothing more from me but good-bye and the door bolted. Now, down with
you!'

He expected me to descend.

'And if he did, he would never have my arm.' Janet's eyes glittered hard
on the squire.

'Before that rascal dies, my dear, he shall whine like a beggar out in
the cold for the tips of your fingers!'

'Not if he asks me first,' said Janet.

This set him off again. He realized her prospective generosity, and
contrasted it with my actual obtuseness. Janet changed her tactics. She
assumed indifference. But she wanted experience, and a Heriot to help
her in playing a part. She did it badly--overdid it; so that the old
man, now imagining both of us to be against his scheme for uniting us,
counted my iniquity as twofold. Her phrase, 'Harry and I will always be
friends,' roused the loudest of his denunciations upon me, as though
there never had been question of the princess, so inveterate was his
mind's grasp of its original designs. Friends! Would our being friends
give him heirs by law to his estate and name? And so forth. My aunt
Dorothy came to moderate his invectives. In her room the heavily-
burdened little book of figures was produced, and the items read aloud;
and her task was to hear them without astonishment, but with a business-
like desire to comprehend them accurately, a method that softened the