'Foolish girl!' he began at once; 'still mooning, and actually talking, as Cadbury told me, of that utterly ineligible and most detrimental fellow at Aldershot; I am certain you could forget him if you tried, Alison. In these days of ours, ninety-nine girls out of a hundred would leap with exultation at such offers as those of Lord Cadbury.' 'Then, I suppose, I must be the hundredth girl, papa,' said Alison, steadily and gravely; for a consciousness that her father, whom she had deemed the mirror of honour, had leagued with this _parvenu_ to deceive her, had caused a change in her manner towards him. 'And I repeat that in these days of ours,' he continued, 'it is, or ought to be, the object of both men and women to marry well.' 'That is, to marry for money,' said Alison. 'Yes; if a girl has beauty and birth, but not money, she should look for some one who has that more than necessary element towards our very existence. If she has money with both these attributes, she should look for something more.' 'More, papa?' 'Yes, she should look for that which a poor girl seldom or never has offered her.' 'And what is that?' 'A title.' 'In fact, in any way or every way to sell herself to the highest bidder. Oh, what a selfish code!' exclaimed the girl, with great bitterness of heart. 'Did the Cheynes of Essilmont always do this?' 'They of old were not as we are now.' 'What?' 'Beggars!' replied her father, with equal bitterness of heart, for his was naturally a proud one; 'but, as Lever says, "the world makes us many things we never meant to be."' 'Do you forget, papa, that marriage is a sacrament, and that without a full and perfect consent it is in reality no marriage at all, and should not be binding, even though the blessing were given by the Archbishop of Canterbury.' 'What do you mean, Alison?' asked her father, surprised alike by her tone and this theory. 'Simply what I say.' 'How dare you, a mere girl, talk thus?' 'Take care, papa. If driven desperate, there is no knowing what I may--not say--but do!' Sir Ranald became silent. He had never seen her in this mood before; and he, of course, ascribed it to 'the fatal influence that fellow Goring had obtained over her mind.' So this conversation ended; but the interview with her father and that with Cadbury are but examples of many with which she was tormented daily _ad nauseam_.