. I hadn't any settled plan then;--how
could I? But I meant her to understand that when her father died
I would be the same to her that I am to you. If you were alone, in
distress, would I not go to you?"

"But I have no one else, Will," said she, stretching out her hand to
him where he stood.

"That makes no difference," he replied, almost roughly. "A promise is
a promise, and I resolved from the first that my promise should hold
good in spite of my disappointment. Dear, dear;--it seems but the
other day when I made it,--and now, already, everything is changed."
As he was speaking the servant entered the room, and told him that
the horse and gig were ready for him. "I shall just do it nicely,"
said he, looking at his watch. "I have over an hour. God bless you,
Mary. I shan't be away long. You may be sure of that."

"I don't suppose you can tell as yet, Will."

"What should keep me long? I shall see Green as I go by, and that is
half of my errand. I dare say I shan't stay above a night down in
Somersetshire."

"You'll have to give some orders about the estate."

"I shall not say a word on the subject,--to anybody; that is, not to
anybody there. I am going to look after her, and not the estate."
Then he stooped down and kissed his sister, and in another minute was
turning the corner out of the farm-yard on to the road at a quick
pace, not losing a foot of ground in the turn, in that fashion of
rapidity which the horses at Plaistow Hall soon learned from their
master. The horse is a closely sympathetic beast, and will make his
turns, and do his trottings, and comport himself generally in strict
unison with the pulsations of his master's heart. When a horse won't
jump it is generally the case that the inner man is declining to jump
also, let the outer man seem ever so anxious to accomplish the feat.

Belton, who was generally very communicative with his servants,
always talking to any man he might have beside him in his dog-cart
about the fields and cattle and tillage around him, said not a word
to the boy who accompanied him on this occasion. He had a good
many things to settle in his mind before he got to London, and he
began upon the work as soon as he had turned the corner out of the
farm-yard. As regarded this Belton estate, which was now altogether
his own, he had always had doubts and qualms,--qualms of feeling
rather than of conscience; and he had, also, always entertained
a strong family ambition. His peo