‘Dear me!’ exclaimed Miss Robina, as artfully as if she had known nothing, nor overheard every word which had passed. ‘What has happened? I hope nothing has occurred to occasion any quarrel between you. Do think, James, how prejudicial it must be to your interests to quarrel with my father.’ ‘Curse that eternal word “interests”!’ was the unceremonious answer. ‘Your father seems to think that human beings have nothing but interests; that the heart keeps a ledger, and values everything in pounds sterling. Our best affections, our dearest feelings, are with him only as tare, that should pass for nothing in the weight of moral obligations.’ ‘But stop,’ said Robina, ‘don’t be in such a hurry; tell me what all this means--what has affections and dear feelings to do with your counting-house affairs?--I thought you and he never spoke of anything but rum puncheons and sugar cargoes.’ ‘He is incapable of knowing the value of anything less tangible and vendible!’ exclaimed her cousin--‘but I have done with both him and you.’ ‘Me!’ cried Miss Robina, with an accent of the most innocent admiration, that any sly and shrewd miss of eighteen could possibly assume.--‘Me! what have I to do with your hopes and your affections, and your tangible and vendible commodities?’ ‘I beg your pardon, I meant no offence to you, Robina--I am overborne by my feelings,’ said Walkinshaw; ‘and if you knew what has passed, you would sympathize with me.’ ‘But as I do not,’ replied the young lady coolly, ‘you must allow me to say that your behaviour appears to me very extravagant--surely nothing has passed between you and my father that I may not know?’ This was said in a manner that instantly recalled Walkinshaw to his senses. The deep and cunning character of his cousin he had often before remarked--with, we may say plainly, aversion--and he detected at once in the hollow and sonorous affectation of sympathy with which her voice was tuned, particularly in the latter clause of the sentence, the insincerity and hypocrisy of her conduct.--He did not, however, suspect that she had been playing the eavesdropper; and, therefore, still tempered with moderation his expression of the sentiments she was so ingeniously leading him on to declare. ‘No,’ said he, calmly, ‘nothing has passed between your father and me that you may not know, but it will come more properly from him, for it concerns you, and in a manner that I can never take interest or part in.’ ‘Concerns me! concerns me!’ exclaimed the actress; ‘it is impossible that anything of mine could occasion a misunderstanding between you.’ ‘But it has,’ said Walkinshaw; ‘and to deal with you, Robina, as you ought to be dealt with, for affecting to be so ignorant of your father’s long-evident wishes and intents--he has actually declared that he is most anxious we should be married.’ ‘I can see no harm in that,’ said she, adding dryly, ‘provided it is not to one another.’