Also, as it happens, she can't marry anyone without my consent, at any rate until she is five and twenty, for if she does, under her father's will all her property goes away, most of it to charities, except a beggarly L200 a year.

You see my brother John had a great horror of imprudent marriages and a still greater belief in me, which as it chances, is a good thing for you." "Had he ?" said Sir Robert.

"And pray why is it a good thing for me ?" "Because, my dear Aylward, unless my observation is at fault, there is another Richard in the field, our late partner, Vernon, of whom, by the way, Barbara is extremely fond, though it may only be in a friendly fashion.

At any rate she pays more attention to his wishes and opinions than to mine and yours put together." At the mention of Alan's name Aylward started violently.
"I feared it," he said, "and he is more than ten years my junior and a soldier, not a man of business.

Also there is no use disguising the truth, although I am a baronet and shall be a peer and he is nothing but a beggarly country gentleman with a D.S.O.tacked on to his name, he belongs to a different class to us, as she does too on her mother's side.