To his daughter’s tears and pleading he was equally obdurate.  She might ask anything else of him and he would grant it gladly, though it were half his wealth; but he would be unworthy to be her father if he encouraged such folly as this.  But Spencer’s daughter, when she found conciliatory measures of no avail, proved that she had a will as strong as her father’s; she told him to his face that with or without his sanction she meant to be my Lady Compton.  “I will marry him,” she declared with flushed face and panting breast, “even if you make me a beggar.”  “And that, madam,” the defied and furious father retorted, “I can promise you I will do; for not a shilling of mine shall Lord Compton’s wife ever have.”

For a time the artful Elizabeth feigned submission to Sir John’s anger; and he began to congratulate himself that this trouble at least, whatever others might follow, was at an end.  But how little he knew his daughter, or her lover, the sequel proved.

One day, a few weeks after Sir John’s fierce ultimatum, a young baker, carrying a large flat-topped basket, called at his house, from which he soon emerged, touching his cap to the merchant as he passed him in the garden, and giving him a respectful “good day.”  “A civil young man,” Sir John said to himself, as he continued his promenade; “his face seems somehow familiar to me.”  And well might it be familiar; for the baker who gave him such a civil greeting was none other than the scapegrace, Compton; and inside the basket, which he carried so lightly, was the merchant’s only daughter and heiress, whom her lover had taken this daring and unconventional way of abducting under the very nose of her parent.

It was not long before Sir John’s disillusionment came.  His daughter was nowhere to be seen; and none of his domestics knew of her whereabouts.  Alarm gave place to suspicion, and suspicion to fury against his child and against the young reprobate who, he felt sure, had outwitted him.  Messengers were despatched in all directions in chase of the runaways; but the escapade had been much too cunningly planned to fail in execution.  Before Sir John set eyes on his daughter again—­now becomingly penitent—­she had blossomed into the Baroness Compton, wife of the last man her father would have desired to call his son-in-law.

To “Rich Spencer” the blow was crushing, humiliating.  It was bad enough to be defied and outwitted, to be made a fool of by his own daughter; but to know that the treasure he had lost had fallen into such undesirable hands was bitter beyond words.  His home and his heart were alike desolate; and, in his despair and wrath, he vowed that he would never own his daughter as his child, and that not one penny of his should ever go into the Compton coffers.

In this mood of sullen, unforgiving anger Sir John remained for a full year; when to his surprise and delight he received a summons to attend, at Whitehall, on the Queen, whose graciousness during his mayoralty he remembered with pleasure and gratitude; and no man in England was prouder or more pleased than he when, at the time appointed, he made his bow to his Sovereign-Lady and kissed her hand.