And now, ma'am, how would you recommend me to go
to work with the vindictive old man up at the Hall?"
"I shouldn't have thought he was vindictive. That is not at all the
character he bears."
"No," the sergeant said, "I hear him spoken well of; but I have seen,
in other cases, men, who have had the name of being pleasant and
generous, were yet tyrants and brutes in their own family. I judge him
as I found him--a hard hearted, tyrannical, vindictive father. I think
I had better not see him myself. We have never met. I have never set
eyes on him save here in church; but he regarded me as responsible for
the folly of his son. He wrote me a violent letter, and said I had
inveigled the lad into the marriage; and although I might have told him
it was false, I did not answer his letter, for the mischief was done
then, and I hoped he would cool down in time.
"However, that is all past now; but I don't wish to see him. I was
thinking of letting the child go to the Hall by herself, and drop in
suddenly upon him. She is very like her father, and may possibly take
his heart by storm."
"Yes," Mrs. Walsham assented. "Now I know who she is, I can see the
likeness strongly. Yes; I should think that that would be the best way.
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