« rejoined Mr. Chester
with the utmost blandness, »to find my own impression so confirmed. You see the
advantage of our having met. We understand each other. We quite agree. We have a
most complete and thorough explanation, and we know what course to take. - Why
don't you taste your tenant's wine? It's really very good.«
    »Pray who,« said Mr. Haredale, »have aided Emma, or your son? Who are their
go-betweens, and agents - do you know?«
    »All the good people hereabouts - the neighbourhood in general, I think,«
returned the other, with his most affable smile. »The messenger I sent to you
to-day, foremost among them all.«
    »The idiot? Barnaby?«
    »You are surprised? I am glad of that, for I was rather so myself. Yes. I
wrung that from his mother - a very decent sort of woman - from whom, indeed, I
chiefly learnt how serious the matter had become, and so determined to ride out
here to-day, and hold a parley with you on this neutral ground. - You're stouter
than you used to be, Haredale, but you look extremely well.«
    »Our business, I presume, is nearly at an end,« said Mr. Haredale, with an
expression of impatience he was at no pains to conceal. »Trust me, Mr. Chester,
my niece shall change from this time. I will appeal,« he added in a lower tone,
»to her woman's heart, her dignity, her pride, her duty -«
    »I shall do the same by Ned,« said Mr. Chester, restoring some errant
faggots to their places in the grate with the toe of his boot. »If there is
anything real in this world, it is those amazingly fine feelings and those
natural obligations which must subsist between father and son. I shall put it to
him on every ground of moral and religious feeling. I shall represent to him
that we cannot possibly afford it - that I have always looked forward to his
marrying well, for a genteel provision for myself in the autumn of life - that
there are a great many clamorous dogs to pay, whose claims are perfectly just
and right, and who must be paid out of his wife's fortune. In short, that the
very highest and most honourable feelings of our nature, with every
consideration of filial duty and affection, and all that sort of thing
