n the human countenance, when irrigated, as
Dorothea's red eyelids too surely testified, by daily tears. Yes, she
had gone about her work of late with a heavy heart and a moody brow.
Hers was at best a dull dreary life, but in it there grew a noxious
weed which she was pleased to cherish for a flower. Well, it was
withering every day before her eyes, and all the tears she could shed
were not enough to keep it alive. Ah! when the ship is going down
under our very feet I don't think it much matters what may be our rank
and rating on board. The cook's mate in the galley is no less dismayed
than the admiral in command. Dorothea's light, so to speak, was only
a tallow-candle, yet to put it out was to leave the poor woman very
desolate in the dark. So Mr. Bargrave ventured one morning to ask if
she felt quite well; but the snappish manner in which his inquiries
were met, as though they masked a load of hidden sarcasm and insult,
caused the old gentleman to scuffle into his office with unusual
activity, much disturbed and humiliated, while resolved never so to
commit himself again.

Into that office we must take the liberty of following him, tenanted
as it is only by himself and Tom Ryfe.

The latter, extremely well dressed, wears a posy of spring flowers at
his buttonhole, and betrays in his whole bearing that he is under some
extraneous influence of an unbusinesslike nature. Bargrave subsides
into his leather chair with a grunt, shuffles his papers, dips a pen
in the inkstand, and looks over his spectacles at his nephew.

"Waste of time, waste of capital, Tom," says he, with some irritation.
"Mind, I washed _my_ hands of it from the first. You've been at work
now for some months; that's _your_ look-out and it's been kept apart
and separate from the general business--that's _mine_."

"I've got Tangle's opinion here," answered Tom; "I won't ask you to
look at it, uncle. He's dead against us. Just what you said six months
back. There's no getting over that trust-deed, nor through it,
nor round it, nor any way to the other side of it. I've done _my_
d----dest, and we're not a bit better off than when we began."

He spoke in a cheerful, almost an exulting tone, quite unlike a man
worsted in a hard and protracted struggle.

"I'm sorry for the young lady," observed Bargrave; "but I never
expected anything else. It's a fine estate, and it must go to the male
heir. She has but a small settlement, Tom, very inadequate to her
po