"I will be perfectly plain with you, my dear Robert," said Mr. Guyon, "frank as the day, all open and aboveboard. I won't disguise from you, I don't attempt to disguise it from myself, that perhaps there never was a man less fitted than I am to have been blessed with what would be a crowning solace to many men--a daughter." Streightley involuntarily started as these words met his ear; and Mr. Guyon noticed the start, but he did not betray himself, and proceeded. "I'm not a domestic man, and not cut out for domestic happiness. I believe my enemies call me a loose fish, and 'pon my soul I think they're right. I like my rubber and my club, and--in fact, my freedom. I'm a sort of claret-and-_entrée_ butterfly, and was never intended for the roast-joint and bread-and-cheese _menagé_ of respectability and home consumption. However, what was intended and what is are two very different things. I have a daughter, and--well, you're a man of the world, and I won't bore you with a father's maudlin praises of his child. She is--there, I was very near breaking into what I had just declared I would not do!--what I mean to say is, her future is my greatest care. I've been a man of the world myself, and I know all she will be exposed to, and, my dear Robert, I tremble when I think of it. I've only to refer to my own conscience to see what might be in store for her. Her poor mother--of whom she is the very image--was weak enough to marry me; and though--though I always treated her as a gentleman should treat his wife, by Jove! I know I--many shortcomings." Here Mr. Guyon buried his face in a large white pocket-handkerchief; and Streightley, not knowing what to say or do, drummed vacantly on the table. "You follow me, my dear boy? Of course, I knew you would," resumed Mr. Guyon after a momentary pause. "Now wait and hear the rest. A girl like Katharine, possessing--well, what I suppose even I may call many attractions--will necessarily receive a vast amount of admiration from all sorts of men; and it will be my duty--and a duty which I shall perform with the greatest strictness; she has no mother, you know, poor girl! and I must be doubly vigilant--to see that she does not get led away and tempted into any foolish alliance by any good-looking young fashionable fop with nothing but his good looks to recommend him. What my girl requires in a husband--for she is light and giddy, like the rest of her sex--is ballast, my dear Robert; a man of matured experience and not too young in years; one whom she could look up to, who could give her the position which her beauty, and--I may say her birth--entitle her to;--that's the sort of husband to whom alone I should be happy in giving my Katharine." Mr. Guyon paused once more, and Streightley bowed again in an absent manner, his right hand all the time plucking at his chin.