"Yes, my child. There, you're not afraid of me." "Oh, no, dear," she cried, drawing his arm around her neck, and holding his hand with both hers to her throbbing bosom. "Papa, I'm afraid--" "Afraid, my dear?" "Afraid that I love Mr Melton very dearly." She hid her face upon the withered old hand, and the burning blood crimsoned her soft white neck at this avowal. "Well--well--well! He--he--he!" chuckled the old man. "I--I--I don't see anything so very shocking in that, Maude. Charley Melton is a doosed fine fellow, and I like him very much indeed." "Oh, papa, papa," cried Maude joyfully; and she turned, flung her arms round his neck, and hid her face in his bosom. "Yes, Maude," he continued. "He's a gentleman, and a man of honour, though he's poor like the rest of us." "Thank God--thank God!" murmured Maude, as the words made her heart throb with joy. "His father was a gentleman too and a man of honour, though a bit wild. He was my junior at Eton. I like Charley Melton, and though I should hate the man who tried to rob me of my little pet here, I don't think I should be very hard on him." "Yap--yap--yap!" came from the back drawing-room, and the old gentleman looked inquiringly at his child. "It is a pet dog," she said contemptuously, "that Sir Grantley Wilters has brought as a present for me." "Don't have it, my dear," said the old gentleman, eagerly. "I wouldn't. He's a miserable screw of a fellow, that Wilters. I don't like him, and her ladyship's always trying to bring him forward. She'll be wanting to make him marry you next." "Didn't you know, papa?" cried Maude. "Know, my darling? Know what?" "He has proposed to mamma for my hand." "Then--then--then," cried the old man, indignantly, "he--he--he shan't have it. If my Maude is to be nurse to any man, she shall be nurse to me. He--he don't want a wife." The old man shook his head angrily, and then patted and caressed the fair young girl who clung to him for protection. What his protection was worth he showed when a carriage stopped at the door, and her ladyship's trumpet tones were heard soon after on the stairs. "Maude, my darling," he said, "here's her ladyship. I--I think I'll slip off this way down to my study." He went out by one door, timing himself carefully, as her ladyship came in at the other, and began praising the "lovely" little pet dog which Sir Grantley had left, to which the little brute replied by snapping at her fiercely as she approached her hand. All the same though it had to make friends with her ladyship, who adopted it from the next day, Maude stubbornly refusing to have anything to do with the black and tan specimen of the canine race wrought by the "fancy" in filigree. CHAPTER TEN. LOVE'S MESSENGERS.