On the whole, I think that the worship of this daughter of mine is a redeeming point in my character, for which otherwise, sitting in judgment on it as I do to-day, I have no respect.  Jane understood that worship, and was grateful to me for it.  Her fine unsullied instinct taught her that whatever else about me might be unsound or tarnished, this at least rang true and was beyond suspicion.  She may have seen my open faults and divined my secret weaknesses, but for the sake of the love I bore her she overlooked them all, indeed she refused to acknowledge them, to the extent that my worst political extravagances became to her articles of faith.  What I upheld was right; what I denounced was wrong; on other points her mind was open and intelligent, but on these it was a shut and bolted door.  “My father says so,” was her last argument.

My position being such that I could ensure her a splendid future, I was naturally anxious that she should make a brilliant marriage, since with monstrous injustice destiny has decreed that a woman’s road to success must run past the altar.  But as yet I could find no man whom I considered suitable or worthy.  One or two I knew, but they were not peers, and I wished her to marry a peer or a rising politician who would earn or inherit a peerage.

And so, good easy man, I looked around me, and said that full surely my greatness was a-ripening.  Who thinks of winter and its frosts in the glow of such a summer as I enjoyed?

For a while everything went well.  I took a house in Green Street, and entertained there during the sitting of Parliament.  The beauty of the hostess, my daughter Jane, together with my own position and wealth, of which she was the heiress, were sufficient to find us friends, or at any rate associates, among the noblest and most distinguished in the land, and for several seasons my dinner parties were some of the most talked about in London.  To be asked to one of them was considered a compliment, even by men who are asked almost everywhere.

With such advantages of person, intelligence and surroundings at her command, Jane did not lack for opportunities of settling herself in life.  To my knowledge she had three offers in one season, the last of them from perhaps the best and most satisfactory parti in England.  But to my great and ever-increasing dismay, one after another she refused them all.  The first two disappointments I bore, but on the third occasion I remonstrated.  She listened quite quietly, then said: 

“I am very sorry to vex you, father dear, but to marry a man whom I do not care about is just the one thing I can’t do, even for your sake.”

“But surely, Jane,” I urged, “a father should have some voice in such a matter.”

“I think he has a right to say whom his daughter shall not marry, perhaps, but not whom she shall marry.”

“Then, at least,” I said, catching at this straw, “will you promise that you won’t become engaged to any one without my consent?”