When the time came, all the Tringles, together with the Honourable Mrs Traffick, started for Glenbogie. Aunt Emmeline had told Sir Thomas all Lucy’s sins, but Sir Thomas had not made so much of them as his wife had expected. “It wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a husband for Lucy,” said Sir Thomas.

“But the man hasn’t got a sixpence.”

“He has a profession.”

“I don’t know that he makes anything. And then think of his father! He is — illegitimate!” Sir Thomas seemed rather to sneer at this. “And if you knew the way the old man lives in Rome! He plays cards all Sunday!” Again Sir Thomas sneered. Sir Thomas was fairly submissive to the conventionalities himself, but did not think that they ought to stand in the way of a provision for a young lady who had no provision of her own. “You wouldn’t wish to have him at Queen’s Gate?” asked Lady Tringle.

“Certainly not, if he makes nothing by his profession. A good deal, I think, depends upon that.” Then nothing further was said, but Lucy was not told her uncle’s opinion on the matter, as had been promised. When she went down to Glenbogie she only knew that Mr Hamel was considered to be by far too black a sheep to be admitted into her aunt’s presence, and that she must regard herself as separated from the man as far as any separation could be effected by her present protectors. But if he would be true to her, as to a girl whom he had a short time since so keenly rejoiced in “finding again,” she was quite sure that she could be true to him.

On the day fixed, the 20th of August, Mr Houston arrived at Glenbogie, with boots and stockings and ammunition, such as Tom had recommended when interrogated on those matters by his sister, Gertrude. “I travelled down with a man I think you know,” he said to Lucy — “at any rate your sister does, because I saw him with her at Rome.” The man turned out to be Isadore Hamel. “I didn’t like to ask him whether he was coming here,” said Frank Houston.

“No; he is not coming here,” said Aunt Emmeline.

“Certainly not,” said Gertrude, who was quite prepared to take up the cudgels on her mother’s behalf against Mr Hamel.

“He said something about another man he used to know at Rome, before you came. He was a nephew of that Marchesa Baldoni.”

“She was a lady we didn’t like a bit too well,” said Gertrude.

“A very stuck-up sort of person, who did all she could to spoil Ayala,” said Aunt Emmeline.

“Ayala has just been staying with her,” said Lucy. She has been very kind to Ayala.”

“We have nothing to do with that now,” said Aunt Emmeline. “Ayala can stay with whom she and her aunt pleases. Is this Mr Hamel, whom you saw, a friend of the Marchesa’s?”

“He seemed to be a friend of the Marchesa’s nephew,” continued Houston — “one Colonel Stubbs. We used to see him at Rome, and a most curious man he is. His name is Jonathan, and I don’t suppose that any man was ever seen so red before. He is shooting somewhere, and Hamel seems to be going to join him. I thought he might have been coming here afterwards, as you all were in Rome together.”

“Certainly he is not coming here,” said Aunt Emmeline. “And as for Colonel Stubbs, I never heard of him before.”

A week of the time allotted to Frank Houston had gone before he had repeated a word of his suit to Sir Thomas. But with Gertrude every opportunity had been allowed him, and by the rest of the family they had been regarded as though they were engaged. Mr Traffick, who was now at Glenbogie, in accordance with the compact made with him, did not at first approve of Frank Houston. He had insinuated to Lady Tringle, and had said very plainly to Augusta, that he regarded a young man, without any employment and without any income, as being quite unfit to marry. “If he had a seat in the House it would be quite a different thing,” he had said to Augusta. But his wife had snubbed him; telling him, almost in so many words, that if Gertrude was determined to have her way in opposition to her father she certainly would not be deterred by her brother-in-law. “It’s nothing to me,” Mr Traffick had then said; “the money won’t come out of my pocket; but when a man has nothing else to do he is sure to spend all that he can lay his hands upon.” After that, however, he withdrew his opposition, and allowed it to be supposed that he was ready to receive Frank Houston as his brother-in-law, should it be so decided.

The time was running by both with Houston, the expectant son-in-law, and with Mr Traffick, who had achieved his position, and both were aware that no grace would be allowed to them beyond that which had been promised. Frank had fully considered the matter, and was quite resolved that it would be unmanly in him to run after his cousin Imogene, in the Tyrol, before he had performed his business. One day, therefore, after having returned from the daily allowance of slaughter, he contrived to find Sir Thomas in the solitude of his own room, and again began to act the part of Allan-a-Dale. “I thought, Mr Houston,” said Sir Thomas, “that we had settled that matter before.”

“Not quite,” said Houston.

“I don’t know why you should say so. I intended to be understood as expressing my mind.”

“But you have been good enough to ask me down here.”

“I may ask a man to my house, I suppose, without intending to give him my daughter’s hand.” Then he again asked the important question, to which Allan-a-Dale’s answer was so unreasonable and so successful. “Have you an income on which to maintain my daughter?”

“I cannot just say that I have, Sir Thomas,” said Houston, apologetically.

“Then you mean to ask me to furnish you with an income.”

“You can do as you please about that, Sir Thomas.”

“You can hardly marry her without it.”

“Well; no; not altogether. No doubt it is true that I should not have proposed myself had I not thought that the young lady would have something of her own.”

“But she has nothing of her own,” said Sir Thomas. And then that interview was over.

“You won’t throw us over, Lady Tringle?” Houston said to Gertrude’s mother that evening.

“Sir Thomas likes to have his own way,” said Lady Tringle.

“Somebody got round him about Septimus Traffick.”

“That was different,” said Lady Tringle. Mr Traffick is in Parliament, and that gives him an employment. He is a son of Lord Boardotrade, and some of these days he will be in office.”

“Of course, you know that if Gertrude sticks to it she will have her own way. When a girl sticks to it her father has to give way. What does it matter to him whether I have any business or not? The money would be the same in one case as the other, only it does seem such an unnecessary trouble to have it put off.”

All this Lady Tringle seemed to take in good part, and half acknowledged that if Frank Houston were constant in the matter he would succeed at last. Gertrude, when the time for his departure had come, expressed herself as thoroughly disgusted by her father’s sternness. “It’s all bosh,” she said to her lover. Who is Lord Boardotrade that that should make a difference? I have as much right to please myself as Augusta.” But there was the stern fact that the money had not been promised, and even Frank had not proposed to marry the girl of his heart without the concomitant thousands.

Before he left Glenbogie, on the evening of his departure, he wrote a second letter to Miss Docimer, as follows —

DEAR COUSIN IM ,

Here I am at Glenbogie, and here I have been for a week, without doing a stroke of work. The father still asks “of his house and his home” and does not seem to be at all affected by my reference to the romantic grandeur of my own peculiar residence. Perhaps I may boast so far as to say that I have laughed on the lass as successfully as did Allan-a-Dale. But what’s the good of laughing on a lass when one has got nothing to eat? Allan-a-Dale could pick a pocket or cut a purse, accomplishments in which I am altogether deficient. I suppose I shall succeed sooner or later, but when I put my neck into the collar I had no idea that there would be so much uphill work before me. It is all very well joking, but it is not nice to be asked “of your house and your home” by a gentleman who knows very well you’ve got none, and is conscious of inhabiting three or four palaces himself. Such treatment must be described as being decidedly vulgar. And then he must know that it can be of no possible permanent use. The ladies are all on my side, but I am told by Tringle mère that I am less acceptable than old Traffick, who married the ot............