“Pray, is Miss Folliard at home, sir?”

“Again I’m forgotten,” thought the squire.  “Ah, what an affectionate son-in-law he’d make!  What a tender husband for Helen!  Why, hang the fellow, he has a heart for nobody, but himself.  She is at home, Sir Robert, but the truth is, I don’t think it would become me, as a father anxious for the happiness of his child, and that child, an only one, to sacrifice her happiness—­the happiness of her whole life—­to wealth or ambition.  You know she herself entertains a strong prejudice—­no, that’s not the word—­”

“I beg your pardon, sir; that is the word; her distaste to me is a prejudice, and nothing else.”

“No, Sir Robert; it is not the word.  Antipathy is the word.  Now I tell you, once for all, that I will not force my child.”

“This change, Mr. Folliard,” observed the baronet, “is somewhat of the suddenest.  Has any thing occurred on my part to occasion it?”

“Perhaps I may have other views for her, Sir Robert.”

“That may be; but is such conduct either fair or honorable towards me, Mr. Folliard?  Have I got a rival, and if so, who is he?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t tell you that for the world.”

“And why not, pray?”

“Because,” replied the squire, “if you found out who he was, you’d be hanged for cannibalism.”

“I really don’t understand you, Mr. Folliard.  Excuse me, but it would seem to me that something has put you into no very agreeable humor to-day.”

“You don’t understand me!  Why, Sir Robert,” replied the other, “I know you so well that if you heard the name of your rival you would first kill him, then powder him, and, lastly, eat him.  You are such a terrible fellow that you care about no man’s life, not even about mine.”

Now it was to this very point that the calculating baronet wished to bring him.  The old man, he knew, was whimsical, capricious, and in the habit of taking all his strongest and most enduring resolutions from sudden contrasts produced by some mistake of his own, or from some discovery made to him on the part of others.

“As to your life, Mr. Folliard, let me assure you,” replied Sir Robert, “that there is no man living prizes it, and, let me add, you character too, more highly than I do; but, my dear sir, your life was never in danger.”

“Never in danger! what do you mean, Sir Robert?  I tell you, sir, that the murdering miscreant, the Red Rapparee, had a loaded gun levelled at me last evening, after dark.”

“I know it,” replied the other; “I am well aware of it, and you were rescued just in the nick of time.”

“True enough,” said the squire, “just in the nick of time; by that glorious young fellow—­a—­a—­yes—­Reilly—­Willy Reilly.”

“This Willy Reilly, sir, is a very accomplished person, I think.”

“A gentleman, Sir Robert, every inch of him, and as handsome and fine-looking a young fellow as ever I laid my eyes upon.”