"Hold your tongue, sir; don't talk to me, I tell you. In love with somebody else? I should like to see him show his face here. Somebody she's talked to for five minutes at a race-ball, and proposed to her in a corner, thinking to get some of my money. Some swindler, or Italian refugee, or blackleg, I'll be bound--taken her in, made her think him an angel, and will persuade her to run away with him. I'll set the police round the house--I'll send her to school in Paris. What fools men are to have anything to do with women at all! You seem in their confidence; who's the fellow?" "A man very like a swindler or a blackleg--Keane!" "Keane!" shouted the General, pausing in the middle of his frantic march. "Keane," responded Sydie. "Keane!" shouted the General again. "God bless my soul, she might as well have fallen in love with the man in the moon. Why couldn't she like the person I'd chosen for her?" "If one can't guide the mare one's self, 'tisn't likely the governors can for one," muttered Sydie. "Poor dear child! fallen in love with a man who don't care a button for her, eh? Humph!--that's always the way with women--lose the good chances, and fling themselves at a man's feet who cares no more for their tom-foolery of worship than he cares for the blacking on his boots. Devil take young people, what a torment they are! The ungrateful little jade, how dare she go and smash all my plans like that? and if I ever set my heart on anything, I set it on that match. Keane! he'll no more love anybody than the stone cherubs on the terrace. He's a splendid head, but his heart's every atom as cold as granite. Love her? Not a bit of it. When I told him you were going to marry her (I thought you would, and so you will, too, if you've the slightest particle of gratitude or common sense in either of you), he listened as quietly and as calmly as if he had been one of the men in armor in the hall. Love, indeed! To the devil with love, say I! It's the head and root of everything that's mischievous and bad." "Wait a bit, uncle," cried Sydie; "you told him all about your previous match-making, eh? And didn't he go off like a shot two days after, when we meant him to stay on a month longer? Can't you put two and two together, my once wide-awake governor? 'Tisn't such a difficult operation." "No, I can't," shouted the General: "I don't know anything, I don't see anything, I don't believe in anything, I hate everybody and everything, I tell you; and I'm a great fool for having ever set my heart on any plan that wanted a woman's concurrence-- For if she will she will, you may depend on't, And if she won't she won't, and there's an end on't." Wherewith the General stuck his wide-awake on fiercely, and darted out of the bay-window to cool himself. Half way across the lawn, he turned sharp round, and came back again. "Sydie, do you fancy Keane cares a straw for that child?" "I can't say. It's possible."