Janet shut his mouth, kissed him, and held his wine up.  He drank, and thumped the table.  ’We ’ll have parties here, too.  The girl shall have her choice of partners:  she shan’t be kept in the background by a young donkey.  Take any six of your own age, and six sensible men, to try you by your chances.  By George, the whole dozen ’d bring you in non-compos.  You’ve only got the women on your side because of a smart face and figure.’

Janet exclaimed indignantly, ‘Grandada, I’m offended with you’; and walked out on a high step.

‘Come, if he has the women on his side,’ said Captain Bulsted, mildly.

’He’ll be able to go partnering and gallopading as long as his banker ’ll let him, William—­like your gentleman!  That’s true.  We shall soon see.’

‘I leave my character in your hands, sir,’ said I, rising.  ’If you would scold me in private, I should prefer it, on behalf of your guests; but I am bound to submit to your pleasure, and under any circumstances I remember, what you appear to forget, that you are my grandfather.’

So saying, I followed the ladies.  It was not the wisest of speeches, and happened, Captain Bulsted informed me, to be delivered in my father’s manner, for the squire pronounced emphatically that he saw very little Beltham in me.  The right course would have been for me to ask him then and there whether I had his consent to start for Germany.  But I was the sport of resentments and apprehensions; and, indeed, I should not have gone.  I could not go without some title beyond that of the heir of great riches.

Janet kept out of my sight.  I found myself strangely anxious to console her:  less sympathetic, perhaps, than desirous to pour out my sympathy in her ear, which was of a very pretty shape, with a soft unpierced lobe.  We danced together at the Riversley Ball, given by the squire on the night of my father’s Ball in London.  Janet complimented me upon having attained wisdom.  ‘Now we get on well,’ she said.  ’Grandada only wants to see us friendly, and feel that I am not neglected.’

The old man, a martyr to what he considered due to his favourite, endured the horror of the Ball until suppertime, and kept his eyes on us two.  He forgot, or pretended to forget, my foreign engagement altogether, though the announcement in the newspapers was spoken of by Sir Roderick and Lady Echester and others.

‘How do you like that?’ he remarked to me, seeing her twirled away by one of the young Rubreys.

‘She seems to like it, sir,’ I replied.

‘Like it!’ said he.  ’In my day you wouldn’t have caught me letting the bloom be taken off the girl I cared for by a parcel o’ scampish young dogs.  Right in their arms!  Look at her build.  She’s strong; she’s healthy; she goes round like a tower.  If you want a girl to look like a princess!’