Mr. Bonamy felt as if he were being stoned--one solid, heavy fact tossed at him after another; and looked at his questioner with a sort of gasp between the blows. He faltered after a while, “She is very young. She has everything that her heart can desire. Why should she not be content, at least for years to come, in her father’s house?” “I always understood, Sir,” said Harry, with his usual straightforwardness, “that the right thing for girls was to marry when they were young, and that parents were supposed to wish it.” “To scheme for it, perhaps?” said Mr. Bonamy, furiously, “and put out all sorts of snares to catch young fellows like you--eh? To lay traps for you, and lead you on, and give you encouragement and opportunity, and so forth? Perhaps you think that’s what I’ve been doing--eh? God forgive me,” he said, “in my day I’ve said that sort of thing, and believed it myself; I’ve sneered and scoffed like the rest--and now I’ve got my punishment. You think there is nothing so fine for a girl as to get married--eh?” Harry was struck with consternation by this attack; but yet, feeling that he had right on his side, he stood his ground. “I am not saying anything about _you_, Sir,” he said, “but surely it is thought the best thing that could happen. I’ve always heard it. Fathers and mothers, you know, Sir, don’t generally live as long as their children--at least, that is what is supposed--and they like to see their daughters settled, don’t they, before they die?” This was what the French would call a brutal speech--for, in the first place, it was true; and then Mr. Bonamy was at an age which seemed old to Harry, but rather young than otherwise to himself, and he was not at all pleased to have it taken for granted that he must shortly be going to die. Yes, of course Rita would outlive him, would live long, he hoped, after him; but still the idea that there was any need to marry her off in haste, lest he might die and leave her before she was--settled, was most repugnant to him; it went to his heart, wounding him with a possibility which he had no desire to think of; and it made him hot and angry, as if it had been a personal insult. No one likes to be told that he has come to a period of life at which it is more likely than otherwise that he will shortly die, and that it is very necessary to take precautions against that event. It was all he could do to keep from bursting out upon Harry, crushing him with a bitter rejoinder. He to address his benefactor thus! He to speak in this tone to the man who had received him when nobody else would, who had lifted him out of all the difficulties of a stranger, and opened not only his office, which gave him bread, but his house, which gave him friends, and position, and everything a young man could wish for! These words were rushing to Mr. Bonamy’s lips, when fortunately a sense of his personal dignity, and of the impropriety of any such demonstration, came in and stopped him.