Gallilee had gone upstairs, eager to tell Carmina of the handsome
allowance made to her by her father. Having answered in these terms, Mr.
Mool began to fold up the Will--and suddenly stopped.

"Very inconsiderate, on my part," he said; "I forgot, Mr. Ovid, that you
haven't heard the end of it. Let me give you a brief abstract. You
know, perhaps, that Miss Carmina is a Catholic? Very natural--her poor
mother's religion. Well, sir, her good father forgets nothing. All
attempts at proselytizing are strictly forbidden."

Ovid smiled. His mother's religious convictions began and ended with the
inorganic matter of the earth.

"The last clause," Mr. Mool proceeded, "seemed to agitate Mrs. Gallilee
quite painfully. I reminded her that her brother had no near relations
living, but Lady Northlake and herself. As to leaving money to my lady,
in my lord's princely position--"

"Pardon me," Ovid interposed, "what is there to agitate my mother in
this?"

Mr. Mool made his apologies for not getting sooner to the point, with
the readiest good-will. "Professional habit, Mr. Ovid," he explained.
"We are apt to be wordy--paid, in fact, at so much a folio, for so many
words!--and we like to clear the ground first. Your late uncle ends
his Will, by providing for the disposal of his fortune, in two possible
events, as follows: Miss Carmina may die unmarried, or Miss Carmina
(being married) may die without offspring."

Seeing the importance of the last clause now, Ovid stopped him again.
"Do I remember the amount of the fortune correctly?" he asked. "Was it a
hundred and thirty thousand pounds?"

"Yes."

"And what becomes of all that money, if Carmina never marries, or if she
leaves no children?"

"In either of those cases, sir, the whole of the money goes to Mrs.
Gallilee and her daughters."'

CHAPTER IX.

Time had advanced to midnight, after the reading of the Will--and Ovid
was at home.

The silence of the quiet street in which he lived was only disturbed by
the occasional rolling of carriage wheels, and by dance-music from the
house of one of his neighbours who was giving a ball. He sat at his
writing-table, thinking. Honest self-examination had laid out the
state of his mind before him like a map, and had shown him, in its true
proportions, the new interest that filled his life.

Of that interest he was now the willing slave. If he had not known
his mother to be with her, he would have gone back to Carmina when
t