"Circumstances have altered since then. Is he very disagreeable to you?" "Well, papa, I have scarcely thought of him, but to tell you the truth when he has been here on business I have involuntarily thought of a mousing cat, or the animal he is named after on the scent of a hen-roost. But of course I can be civil or even polite to him if you wish it." A spasm of pain crossed her father's face and he put his hand hastily to his head, a frequent act of late. He rose and took a few turns up and down the room, muttering: "Curse it all, I must tell her. Half knowledge is always dangerous, and is sure to lead to blunders, and there must be no blunders now." Stopping abruptly before his daughter, he said, "He has proposed for your hand." An expression of disgust flitted across Edith's face, and she replied quickly: "We both have surely but one answer to such a proposition from _him_." "Edith, you seem to have more sense in regard to business and such matters than most young ladies. I must now test you, and it is for you to show whether you are a woman or a shallow-brained girl. I am sorry to tell you these things. They are not suited to your age or sex, but there is no help for it," and he explained how he was situated. Edith listened with paling cheek, dilating eyes, and parting lips, but still with rising courage and a growing purpose to help her father. "I do not wish you to marry this villain," he continued. "Heaven forbid!" (Not that Mr. Allen referred this or any other matter to Heaven; it was only a strong way of expressing his own disapproval.) "But we must manage to temporize and keep this man at bay till I can extricate myself from my difficulties. As soon as I stand on firm ground I will defy him." To Edith, with her standard of morality, the course indicated by her father seemed eminently filial and praiseworthy. The thought of marrying Mr. Fox made her flesh creep, but a brief flirtation was another affair. She had flirted not a little in her day for the mere amusement of the thing, and with the motives her father had presented she could do it in this case as if it were an act of devotion. Of the pure and lofty morality of the Bible she had as little idea as a Persian houri, and rugged Roman virtue could not develop in the social atmosphere in which the Allens lived. It was with a clear conscience that she resolved to beguile Mr. Fox, and signified as much to her father. "Play him off," said this model father, "as Mr. Goulden does Laura. Curse him!--how I would like to slam the front door in his face. But my time may come yet," he added with set teeth. That morning Mr. Allen sent for Mr. Fox, as he dared brave him no longer without some definite show of yielding, in order to keep back his fatal disclosures. With a dignity and formality scarcely in keeping with his fear and the import of his words, he said: