The last sentence, uttered under his breath, was evoked by the opening of the door, and the entrance of Mr. Townshend, who looked more like the Ace of Clubs than ever when he saw the couple in apparently close conversation. He at once approached his daughter, and asked her if she had "written that letter?" She said, with some tremulousness, "No." Mr. Townshend then raised his voice, and said he must beg--and with him "beg" sounded marvellously like "insist"--that she would do it at once. So the young lady, albeit with tears in her eyes, went dutifully off to obey her father's behests; the old gentleman sat down to the _Times_, while Lyster glared at him from behind a book, and wondered whether one could possibly call a man to account for interrupting one's conversation with his daughter. CHAPTER VIII. TOUCHING ANOTHER PROPOSAL. Mr. Beresford meanwhile had strolled round to the stables, ascertained that, with the exception of the loss of a little hair from her off-hock, Gulnare seemed none the worse for her journey (horses never travel by rail without a something), ordered his groom to bring her round in half an hour's time, and made a cursory inspection of the other horses while finishing his cigar. At the time appointed he mounted and rode away into Brighton, starting at first over the Downs in a brisk canter, but gradually subsiding into a checked walk, which ill suited Gulnare's fiery disposition, and made her rider break the current of his thoughts by several behests of "Steady now!" "Quiet, old lady;" and such like. Indeed, Mr. Beresford had quite enough subject-matter for reflection. He, too, had been turning over in his mind the expediency of proposing to Miss Townshend, and had almost determined upon its being the right thing to do. The objection which he had urged in his discussion with Kate Mellon, that money and ugliness generally went together, would not hold good here. Miss Townshend was pretty and presentable; she was not clever, certainly; but so long as she was able to talk about Shakespeare and the musical glasses, that was all which the world would require of her in the way of conversation, and that sort of jargon would be easily picked up. She knew passably sufficient of the accomplishments of society, and was, as times went, in a very good set. Her people belonged to the plutocracy; but Beresford liked that rather than otherwise, recollecting how far pleasanter than the sham state and starveling magnificence of some of his aristocratic friends were the town-houses and country places of City magnates and merchant princes, where every thing, from the sleek porter in the hall to the new and massive salt-spoons on the table, spoke of wealth. To ascertain whether his venture was a safe one was the object of Beresford's visit to Brighton. He had known so many mushroom magnates, who, after a couple of seasons of full-blown pride, had collapsed and tumbled into the mud