“Am I to understand,” he said at last, “that you are making me a proposal for Stella, Sir Charles? Eh? It is for Stella, is it, and not for any other thing? Come, that’s a good thing to understand each other. Stella is a great pet of mine. She is a very great pet. There is nobody in the world that I think like her, or that I would do so much for.” “M’ own feelings--to a nicety--but better expressed,” Sir Charles said. “That girl has had a deal of money spent on her, Sir Charles, first and last; you wouldn’t believe the money that girl has cost me, and I don’t say she ain’t worth it. But she’s a very expensive article and has been all her life. It’s right you should look that in the face before we get any forwarder. She has always had everything she has fancied, and she’ll cost her husband a deal of money, when she gets one, as she has done me.” This address made Somers feel very small, for what could he reply? To have been quite truthful, the only thing he could have said would have been, “I hope, sir, you will give her so much money that it will not matter how expensive she is;” but this he could not say. “I know very well,” he stammered, “a lady--wants a lot of things;--hope Stella--will never--suffer, don’t you know?--through giving her to me.” Ah, how easy it was to say that! But not at all the sort of thing to secure Stella’s comfort, or her husband’s either, which, on the whole, was the most important of the two to Sir Charles. “That’s just what we’ve got to make sure of,” said old Tredgold, chuckling more than ever. There was no such joke to the old man as this which he was now enjoying. And he did not look forbidding or malevolent at all. Though what he said was rather alarming, his face seemed to mean nothing but amiability and content. “Now, look here, Sir Charles, I don’t know what your circumstances are, and they would be no business of mine, but for this that you’ve been telling me; you young fellows are not very often flush o’ money, but you may have got it tied up, and that sort of thing. I don’t give my daughter to any man as can’t count down upon the table shillin’ for shillin’ with me.” This he said very deliberately, with an emphasis on every word; then he made a pause, and, putting his hand in his pocket, produced a large handful of coins, which he proceeded to tell out in lines upon the table before him. Sir Charles watched him in consternation for a moment, and then with a sort of fascination followed his example. By some happy chance he had a quantity of change in his pocket. He began with perfect gravity to count it out on his side, coin after coin, in distinct rows. The room was quite silent, the air only moved by the sound of a cinder falling now and then on the hearth and the clink of the money as the two actors in this strange little drama went on with the greatest seriousness counting out coin after coin.