"Too young to be married, perhaps, but not too young to be perverted by sentimental tales about lovers; and a few years later the governess whispers that the romance may be made earnest, and some fine afternoon governess and pupil meet a young man in the park, who protests he has seen Miss at her window one day and has been pining for her ever since. Then come a post-chaise, pistols, and a helter-skelter drive to the purleius of the Fleet Prison, and the pretty young pair are fast bound in matrimonial fetters before the father can catch them." "I'll warrant there shall be no folly of that kind," said Bosworth. "How will you warrant it? Every adventurer in London knows that you made a hundred thousand the other day in the South Sea Bubble, and that you had made a handsome fortune on 'Change long before that great _coup_, dabbling first in one stock, now in another; and they know that you have an only child, like Shylock's Jessica. Do you suppose there will be no Lorenzo to hunt after your daughter and your ducats? Perhaps among those penniless wights there may be some who have been ruined by the South Sea scheme, and who will bear no love to you who sold your stock when the madness was at its height, and when every hundred-pound share realised over a thousand to the speculator who was clever enough to profit by the craziness of the mob." "Lorenzo shall have no chance with my daughter." "Ay, so long as she is guarded from crafty go-betweens; but admit a governess and a fine Italian music-master, and look out for rope-ladders and post-chaises. Why cannot I teach Rena? I am a better musician than many of your Signors, and I can read and write English and French as well as any chit of a governess you can hire." "No," answered Bosworth sternly, "_that_ is out of the question. I will not have my dead wife's daughter taught by you." Barbara looked at him for a moment or two, white with fury; and then she burst into a mocking laugh. "Your dead wife's daughter! O, that is her new name, is it? Your wife's daughter. It is well you should throw your wife's name in my face--the name I once had." "Never by any legal right, though you might have borne that name in serious earnest, my brimstone beauty, had you kept a little tighter rein on that diabolical temper of yours. Pshaw! why should we quarrel about the past? It is a sealed book for both of us. Get a room ready against this day week, Mrs. Layburne. I shall write to my sister-in-law, Lady Tredgold, to find me a governess for my daughter."