"I've been at him all this afternoon, when you and that woman were out of the room, trying to get it out of him as a loan, without waiting for your promise; but he's too cautious for that.

'The day Ellen gives her consent, you shall have the money,' he told me; 'I can't say anything fairer than that or more liberal.'" "He doesn't suspect why you want it, does he, father ?" Ellen asked with a painful sense of shame.
"Who can tell what he may suspect?
He's as deep as Satan," said the bailiff, with a temporary forgetfulness of his desire to exhibit this intended son-in-law of his in a favourable light.

"He knows that I want the money very badly; I couldn't help his knowing that; and he must think it's something out of the common that makes me want two hundred pounds." "I daresay he guesses the truth," Ellen said, with a profound sigh.
It seemed to her the bitterest trial of all, that her father's wrong-doing should be known to Stephen Whitelaw.

That hideous prospect of the dock and the gaol was far off as yet; she had not even begun to realise it; but she did fully realise the fact of her father's shame, and the blow seemed to her a heavy one, heavier than she could bear.
For some minutes there was silence between father and daughter.

The girl sat with her face hidden in her hands; the bailiff smoked his pipe in sullen meditation.
"Is there no other way ?" Ellen asked at last, in a plaintive despairing tone; "no other way, father ?" "None," growled William Carley.