, having had no hint of the fact from his father. The
solicitor told him what had been done, and how the most strenuous efforts
on his part had only resulted in the insertion of Percival's name after
that of his daughter.

Whatever indignation Mr. Nowell may have felt at the fact that his
daughter had been preferred before him, he contrived to keep hidden in
his own mind. The lawyer was surprised at the quiet gravity with which he
received the intelligence. He listened to Mr. Medler's statement of the
case with the calmest air of deliberation, seemed indeed to be thinking
so deeply that it was as if his thoughts had wandered away from the
subject in hand to some theme which allowed of more profound speculation.

"And if she should die childless, I should get all the free-hold
property?" he said at last, waking up suddenly from that state of
abstraction, and turning his thoughtful face upon the lawyer.

"Yes; all the real estate would be yours."

"Have you any notion what the property is worth?"

"Not an exact notion. Your father gave me a list of investments.
Altogether, I should fancy, the income will be something
handsome--between two and three thousand a year, perhaps. Strange, isn't
it, for a man with all that money to have lived such a life as your
father's?"

"Strange indeed," Percival Nowell cried with a sneer. "And my daughter
will step into two or three thousand a year," he went on: "very pleasant
for her, and for her husband into the bargain. Of course I'm not going to
say that I wouldn't rather have had the income myself. You'd scarcely
swallow that, as a man of the world, you see, Medler. But the girl is my
only child, and though circumstances have divided us for the greater part
of our lives, blood is thicker than water; and in short, since there was
no getting the governor to do the right thing, and leave this money to
me, it's the next best thing that he should leave it to Marian."

"To say nothing of the possibility of her dying without children, and
your coming into the property after all," said Mr. Medler, wondering a
little at Mr. Nowell's philosophical manner of looking at the question.

"Sir," exclaimed Percival indignantly, "do you imagine me capable of
speculating upon the untimely death of my only child?"

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders doubtfully. In the course of his varied
experience he had found men and women capable of very queer things when
their pecuniary interests were at stak