‘A few evenings will dispel all your mauvaise honte,’ he gaily said.  ‘I will hear of no silly objections;’ and, thrusting a purse of gold into her hand, he left the room.

Amy could scarcely realise the truth of the position in which she stood.  The events of the last few days seemed like a dream; but if so, it was a dream from which she would have been glad to have awakened, and to have found herself in her former humble home.  She could not but fear that all her father possessed was held upon a very uncertain tenure, and, what was worse, that it was obtained by dishonourable means.  This idea was strengthened when the gala evening arrived, and our heroine was introduced to her father’s principal patron, a vain and weak-minded man, who listened to his host’s extravagant adulation with evident complacency, though to every one else it was palpably insincere.  Beaufort insisted on his visiting his studio, to give his opinion of the grouping of a historical piece he had sketched out for Amy to fill up.  The baronet, thus flattered, suggested some alterations which would have made it absolutely ridiculous; and the artist would actually have complied, had not his daughter, who had been requested to be present, interposed; and her guest gallantly acquiesced in her judgment.

From this period a new trial awaited the unhappy girl, for Sir Philip Rushwood now became her professed admirer.  Beaufort had planned this affair from the moment of his first introduction to the young man, though he had warily concealed his wishes from Amy.  He had contrived to display, as if by accident, a miniature portrait he had once taken of his daughter; and as he pretended unwillingness, to make known the name of the original, the curiosity of the baronet was naturally excited.  On finding that the beautiful young woman he so much admired was the artist’s daughter, he became anxious to see her; but her father was determined that a meeting should not take place until Amy was in a situation to set off her natural charms, and was removed from her humble lover.  Little suspecting the scheme which had been laid, she met Sir Philip with feelings of gratitude; but they were exchanged for sentiments bordering on disgust when he became a suitor for her hand.  There was nothing vicious about the young man—­he was the dupe, not the deceiver; but to a mind like Amy’s, filled, too, as it was with the image of Herbert Lyddiard, his attentions were intolerable.  The open encouragement he now received from the father, however, emboldened him to persevere, and he professed to look upon her marked disapproval as nothing but maidenly diffidence, and proceeded to address her as though a positive engagement existed between them.