He whose coming she dreaded had been made aware of the hour of her return, as his card, with the pencilled line, ‘Will call on the 17th,’ informed her.  The 17th was the morrow.

After breakfast on the morning of the 17th Seymour Austin looked her in the eyes longer than it is customary for ladies to have to submit to keen inspection.

‘Will you come into the library?’ he said.

She went with him into the library.

Was it to speak of his anxiousness as to the state of her father’s health that he had led her there, and that he held her hand?  He alarmed her, and he pacified her alarm, yet bade her reflect on the matter, saying that her father, like other fathers, would be more at peace upon the establishment of his daughter.  Mr. Austin remarked that the colonel was troubled.

’Does he wish for my pledge never to marry without his approval?  I will give it,’ said Cecilia.

‘He would like you to undertake to marry the man of his choice.’  Cecilia’s features hung on an expression equivalent to:—­I could almost do that.’

At the same time she felt it was not Seymour Austin’s manner of speaking.  He seemed to be praising an unknown person—­some gentleman who was rough, but of solid promise and singular strength of character.

The house-bell rang.  Believing that Beauchamp had now come, she showed a painful ridging of the brows, and Mr. Austin considerately mentioned the name of the person he had in his mind.

She readily agreed with him regarding Mr. Tuckham’s excellent qualities —­if that was indeed the name; and she hastened to recollect how little she had forgotten Mr. Tuckham’s generosity to Beauchamp, and confessed to herself it might as well have been forgotten utterly for the thanks he had received.  While revolving these ideas she was listening to Mr. Austin; gradually she was beginning to understand that she was parting company with her original conjectures, but going at so swift a pace in so supple and sure a grasp, that, like the speeding train slipped on new lines of rails by the pointsman, her hurrying sensibility was not shocked, or the shock was imperceptible, when she heard him proposing Mr. Tuckham to her for a husband, by her father’s authority, and with his own warm seconding.  He had not dropped her hand:  he was very eloquent, a masterly advocate:  he pleaded her father’s cause; it was not put to her as Mr. Tuckham’s:  her father had set his heart on this union he was awaiting her decision.

‘Is it so urgent?’ she asked.

’It is urgent.  It saves him from an annoyance.  He requires a son-in-law whom he can confidently rely on to manage the estates, which you are woman of the world enough to know should be in strong hands.  He gives you to a man of settled principles.  It is urgent, because he may wish to be armed with your answer at any instant.’

Her father entered the library.  He embraced her, and ‘Well?’ he said.