“You are going a little too fast,” he said. “It is neither theirs nor yours, but mine; and I should like to know who has any right to take it from me. Now that we’ve begun on this subject, we’ll have it out, Winnie. You’ve been having your own way more than was good for you. Perhaps, after all, Miss Farrell, who has let you do as you pleased, can go, and somebody else be got who knows better what is suitable to a young lady like you. I can have no more flirtations with doctors, or curates, or that sort. You are old enough to be married, and I want no more nonsense. That sort of thing, though it means nothing, is bad for a girl settling in life.” Winifred had turned from white to red, sitting gazing at him, yet shrinking from his eyes. “Papa,” she said, “I don’t know what you mean,” in a voice so low and troubled that he curved his hand over his ear, half in pretence, half in sincerity, to hear what she had to say. “What I mean?--oh, that is very easy--you are not a child any longer, and you must throw aside childish things. I have asked a few people for the week after next. It’s too early for the country, but I know some that are soon tired of town; and there is a young fellow among them who--well, who is very well disposed towards you, and well worth your catching were you twenty times an heiress. So I hope you’ll mind what you’re about, and play your cards well, and make me father-in-law to an earl. That’s all that I require of you, my dear; and it’s more for your own advantage than mine, when all is said.” He was very much flushed, she thought, and his eyes almost starting from his head. Terror seized her, as though some dreadful catastrophe might happen before her eyes. “Papa,” she said, with an effort, “this is all very new, and there is so much to think of. Please let it be for to-morrow. There has been so much to-night--my head is quite confused, and I don’t seem to understand what you say.” “You shall understand what I say, and it is better to be clear about it once for all. Here is the young Earl coming, as I tell you. He would suit me very well, and I mean him to suit you, so let us have no nonsense. If Miss Farrell thinks fit to leave you just when you want her, she is an ungrateful old-- But we’ll find another woman. I mean everything to be on a right footing when these people turn up.” “Papa, of course I shall do all I can to--please your friends.” “Well, that’s the first step,” he said. “And it’s very much for your own advantage. You would not be my daughter if you did not think of that.” She made no reply. If this was all, she was pledging herself to nothing, she thought, with natural inconsistency. But Mr. Chester was not satisfied. He drew his chair close, so that the odour of his wine and the excitement in his mind seemed to make a haze in the air around.