"There is something that I think you have a right to know, Mr. Lovel," he said, in an awkward hesitating way; "something which I should scarcely like you to learn from your daughter's lips, should she think it worth her while to mention it, before you have heard it from mine. The fact is, in plain English"--he was playing with his dessert-knife as he spoke, and seemed to be debating within himself whereabouts upon the dinning-table he should begin to carve his name--"the fact is, I made an abject fool of myself this morning. I love your daughter--and told her so." Mr. Lovel gave a little start, the faintest perceptible movement, expressive of a gentle astonishment. "I need hardly tell you that you have taken me entirely by surprise," he said in his quietest tone. "Of course not. People always are surprised when a man of my age presumes to fall in love with a beautiful girl of eighteen or twenty. If I were to marry some worn-out woman of fashion, some battered widow, steeped to the lips in worldly wisdom, every one would call the match the most suitable thing possible. But if a man of fifty ventures to dream a brighter dream, he is condemned at once for a fool." "Pardon me, my dear Granger; I have no idea of looking at things in that light. I only remark that you surprise me, as you no doubt surprised my daughter by any avowal you may have made this morning." "Yes; and, I fear, disgusted her still more. I daresay I did my cause all the harm that it was possible to do it." "I must own that you were precipitate," Mr. Lovel answered, with his quiet smile. He felt as if he had been talking to a schoolboy. In his own words the man was so "very far gone." "I shall know how to be more careful in future, if not wiser; but I suffered myself to be carried away by impulse this morning. It was altogether unworthy of--of my time of life." This was said rather bitterly. "Frankly, now, Mr. Lovel: if in the future I were able to gain some hold upon your daughter's affection--without that I would do nothing, no, so help me heaven, however passionately I might love her; if I could--if, in spite of the difference of our ages, I could win her heart--would you be in any way antagonistic to such a marriage?"