“I told him I was quite prepared to think as he did on this point, and begged to know in what the mysterious impediment consisted. ‘Well, sir--ar--I don’t say it--ar--by way of a boast--ar--such things are quite out of my line, but you must have yourself perceived the very marked encouragement which my advances met with yesterday evening--ar--in fact the game was--ar--in my own hands!’ I succeeded in repressing a strong desire to kick him, and he continued with bland dignity: ‘Ar--finding that this was the case, I felt that, as a man of honour, I was bound--ar--to make up my mind definitely as to my future course, and had--ar--all but resolved to acquaint the young lady with the brilliant, that is--ar--in many points unexceptionable position which awaited her, when fortunately--I might say providentially--it occurred to me to open a letter I had that evening received from my friend in the Herald’s College. Imagine my horror to learn that her actual father, the immediately previous Peyton himself, had--ar--_horresco referais_, as Pliny has it-- ’pon my word it quite upset me!’ “‘This dreadful Papa, had he murdered somebody?’ inquired I. “‘No, sir,’ was the answer; ‘Lord Ferrers and other men with unexceptionable pedigrees have committed that crime. There is nothing necessarily vulgar about murder; the case was far worse. This intolerable proximate ancestor, who has not rested in his dishonoured grave above half-a-dozen years, was not only guilty of belonging to an intensely respectable firm in Liverpool, but had actually been insane enough to allow his name to be entered as sleeping partner in a large retail house on Ludgate Hill! Fancy a De Grandeville marrying the daughter of ‘Plumpstern & Peyton’, dealers in cotton goods!”--’pon my word, sir, it took away my breath to think of the narrow escape I’d had!’ ‘And the young lady?’ inquired I.