This time I contented myself with nodding.  Already I perceived what was coming; somehow, when I am with a man I feel so much more clear-headed than I do when I am with a woman,—­realise so much better the nature of the ground on which I am standing.

‘What do you know of this man Lessingham?’

I knew it was coming.

‘What all the world knows.’

’And what does all the world know of him?—­I ask you that!  A flashy, plausible, shallow-pated, carpet-bagger,—­that is what all the world knows of him.  The man’s a political adventurer,—­he snatches a precarious, and criminal, notoriety, by trading on the follies of his fellow-countrymen.  He is devoid of decency, destitute of principle, and impervious to all the feelings of a gentleman.  What do you know of him besides this?’

‘I am not prepared to admit that I do know that.’

’Oh yes you do!—­don’t talk nonsense!—­you choose to screen the fellow!  I say what I mean,—­I always have said, and I always shall say.—­What do you know of him outside politics,—­of his family—­of his private life?’

‘Well,—­not very much.’

’Of course you don’t!—­nor does anybody else!  The man’s a mushroom,—­or a toadstool, rather!—­sprung up in the course of a single night, apparently out of some dirty ditch.—­Why, sir, not only is he without ordinary intelligence, he is even without a Brummagen substitute for manners.’

He had worked himself into a state of heat in which his countenance presented a not too agreeable assortment of scarlets and purples.  He flung himself into a chair, threw his coat wide open, and his arms too, and started off again.

’The family of the Lindons is, at this moment, represented by a—­a young woman,—­by my daughter, sir.  She represents me, and it’s her duty to represent me adequately—­adequately, sir!  And what’s more, between ourselves, sir, it’s her duty to marry.  My property’s my own, and I wouldn’t have it pass to either of my confounded brothers on any account.  They’re next door to fools, and—­and they don’t represent me in any possible sense of the word.  My daughter, sir, can marry whom she pleases,—­whom she pleases!  There’s no one in England, peer or commoner, who would not esteem it an honour to have her for his wife—­I’ve told her so,—­yes, sir, I’ve told her, though you—­you’d think that she, of all people in the world, wouldn’t require telling.  Yet what do you think she does?  She—­she actually carries on what I—­I can’t help calling a—­a compromising acquaintance with this man Lessingham!’

‘No!’

’But I say yes!—­and I wish to heaven I didn’t.  I—­I’ve warned her against the scoundrel more than once; I—­I’ve told her to cut him dead.  And yet, as—­as you saw yourself, last night, in—­in the face of the assembled House of Commons, after that twaddling clap-trap speech of his, in which there was not one sound sentiment, nor an idea which—­which would hold water, she positively went away with him, in—­in the most ostentatious and—­and disgraceful fashion, on—­on his arm, and—­and actually snubbed her father.—­It is monstrous that a parent—­a father!—­should be subjected to such treatment by his child.’