"I don't wish to abuse Mr. Lobyer, my dear. If you are really attached to him"--Flo shrugged her shoulders impatiently--"and if you really think you can be happy as his wife, I have nothing to say against the marriage. I suppose if I were a very prudent man, I ought to rejoice at the idea that my little girl can never know what worldly misfortune is; but----" "But what, papa?" cried Flo. She had untied her bonnet-strings, and had thrown the fragile structure of velvet and feathers aside in her impatience. The fact is, Miss Crawford had not returned from Brighton in the best possible humour, and her father's grave manner annoyed her. "The Hinchliffe girls were never tired of congratulating me, papa," she said; "and Mrs. Hinchliffe declared I was the luckiest creature in Christendom. And Aunt Jane called--she has taken a house in Marine Square for the children--and the Hinchliffes asked her to dinner, and of course they would tell her all about Mr. Lobyer, and she was delighted, and went away in such spirits, declaring that if I have a town-house she will make my uncle move from Russell Square to Tyburnia. But now I come home you snub me and throw cold water upon me, and make me feel as if I were a kind of criminal. It's very cruel of you, papa." "My dear child, I have no wish to be cruel. And so the Hinchliffes are delighted, and Aunt Jane is delighted, because you are going to marry Mr. Lobyer. It is not because he is handsome, I suppose, for I have seen much handsomer men; and it can't be because he is clever, for I must confess that to me he seems rather stupid. Why is it such a grand thing to marry Mr. Lobyer, Flo? and why are the Hinchliffes envious, and Aunt Jane in spirits? Is it because he is rich? Ah, to be sure, that's what it is, of course. He is rich, and we are a wealthy nation; and to marry the wealthiest bachelor of the season is the supremest felicity to which a young lady can attain. I begin to understand it all now; but I am such an old-fashioned man, Flo, that I like the old idea of love in a cottage best." "Papa," said Florence, after a pause, "mamma's marriage was a love-match, and she loved you very dearly--as you deserve to be loved, you dear disagreeable old darling--and I know that she never repented having married you; but when you were very, very poor, did you never feel sorry for having taken her from the comfortable home in Russell Square, and the carriage, and the servants, and the friends, and all that she lost when she became your wife?" "Yes, Flo," answered the painter sadly; "God knows I had my hours of remorse and bitterness."