With poor Alison it was too often a case of 'out of Scylla and into Charybdis,' as her father generally resumed precisely where Cadbury left off. 'Is he gone?' asked Sir Ranald, taking her hand in his thin, wasted, diaphanous fingers, and patting it tenderly on the coverlet of his bed. 'Who, papa?' 'Cadbury. I would speak to you about him again.' She made a little impatient and disdainful _moue_ at the name, but her father, heedless of it, resumed-- 'In the winter of my days I have been compelled to bury myself, and you too, darling, in this dead-alive, man-forgotten place--Chilcote; but I shall soon be out of it, and you--my poor child--you--you----' His voice failed him, and Alison's heart failed her too as he spoke in this pitiful strain. 'As for loving Lord Cadbury,' said Alison, with a voice that seemed full of tears, 'do not talk to me of that when you are so ill and feeble, as it wrings my very soul to oppose you. I may--nay, I must--be grateful for the service his money gift----' 'Say gifts, Alison.' 'Well, gifts have done for you; but I can do no more, my dislike of him is so intense and rooted.' 'Dislike! The proverb has it that a woman's dislike is only love turned inside out; and he loves you so! Think of his coronet.' 'A new one--the gilt not even worn by time--a parvenu coronet.' 'Well,' said her father, impatiently, 'it will be old in time; and does not the land teem with parvenu baronets? They are thick as blackberries now!' And Alison was thankful when he dropped asleep, and she was left to her own aching thoughts, and released from the hateful subject for a time. When a man of Cadbury's age and proclivities conceives a fancy for a girl, he is usually terribly in earnest about it; but 'of that delicious agony--that glorious fear which makes pallid the face of the lover--the void in life which must be filled up by a beloved woman--what did he know?' Nothing--or what had he ever known, old _vaurien_ as he was? In short, he came now, not to watch or hope for recovery, but to learn how _ill_ Sir Ranald was becoming--the sooner the latter was gone the better for his schemes. The baronet had altered greatly for the worse in his mysterious and complicated ailment, and the doctors who came--and, thanks to the birthday gift of Alison, she had secured the best medical attendance--shook their heads gravely when they saw him; but not in her presence, as, with professional humanity, they wished to spare the poor girl any unnecessary pain. Cadbury often reflected with genuine anger on how his plans for separating Alison from her father on the Continent, that he might both compromise and have her at his mercy, had failed; and that he had barely won, by any pretence, even her gratitude. He had spent 'a devil of a lot of money--even thousands one way or other,' and was no nearer his end than before--fair means or foul.