"Your daughter has. What are you making of her? A household drudge--nothing more or less! It's no good coming any of the parental love-business with me, Garth. I've got to marry apparently, and my wife must be a pretty, young English girl of blameless reputation, connected with the clergy, and all that sort of thing. Well, from what you tell me of your little girl, her mother brought her up in a way that would be quite after my old psalm-singing uncle's heart. I don't pretend to be in love with her; but I've never seen a prettier or sweeter face than hers; and, even if she can't be a wife or a companion to me at first, we shall no doubt grow as fond of each other in due time as most married people. She has just the face and voice to get round Uncle Alec. I'm hanged if I can understand how she comes to be your daughter? She's not in the least like you, or, you may take my word for it, I shouldn't want to marry her! Of course I don't expect you to agree to anything that isn't to your own advantage. Your daughter can't be worse off than she is here; and I'm ready to offer you compensation for the loss of her services. Once she's married me, she's got to be an orphan, and you've got to be a dead clergyman; but, as you'll be paid something for keeping quiet, that won't matter." Captain Garth glanced at his proposed son-in-law under his white eyebrows, and his expression was by no means friendly. A lifetime of snubs and shifts had not succeeded in destroying the man's conceit and self-importance, and only the thought of old Alexander Wallace's millions checked his desire to resent Mr. Armstrong's studied insolence of tone and words. Even now he would at once have rejected the young man's proposal from sheer personal dislike but for the fact that the little household in Rue Planché was financially in a very bad way indeed, and that the precarious living which the self-styled captain earned as bookmaker, gambler, speculator in antiques and curios, cicerone, and money-lender, had of late brought in less and less grist to the mill. Yet somewhere in Randolph Garth's tortuous mind there lurked an appreciation for what is good and pure, and he heartily wished that some other man's daughter and not his own could be sacrificed to Wallace Armstrong. For it would be a sacrifice. Garth knew it, with his experience of the seamy side of life and the worst qualities of his fellow-men. He could read it in the fierceness and sullenness of Armstrong's expression, in the puffiness of the skin under his eyes and their bloodshot whites, in the shakiness of the strong brown hand which raised the glass to his lips, and in the lips themselves, over-full and sensual in outline, perpetually curving in an ugly sneer.