consent to receive you as Charlotte's future husband, you and she
must consent to wait until you can, to my entire satisfaction, prove
yourself in a position to keep a wife." Valentine sighed doubtfully.

"I don't think either Miss Halliday or I are in an unreasonable hurry
to begin life together," he said thoughtfully; "but there must be some
fixed limit to our probation. I am afraid the waiting will be a very
long business, if I am to obtain a position that will satisfy you
before I ask my dear girl to share my fate."

"Are your prospects so very black?"

"No; to my mind they seem wonderfully bright. But the earnings of a
magazine-writer will scarcely come up to your idea of an independence.
Just now I am getting about ten pounds a month. With industry, I may
stretch that ten to twenty; and with luck I might make the twenty into
thirty--forty--fifty. A man has only to achieve something like a
reputation in order to make a handsome living by his pen."

"I am very glad to hear that," said Mr. Sheldon; "and when you can
fairly demonstrate to me that you are earning thirty pounds a month,
you shall have my consent to your marriage with Charlotte, and I will
do what I can to give you a fair start in life. I suppose you know that
she hasn't a sixpence in the world, that she can call her own?"

This was a trying question for Valentine Hawkehurst, and Mr. Sheldon
looked at him with a sharp scrutinising glance as he awaited a reply.
The young man flushed crimson, and grew pale again before he spoke.

"Yes," he said, "I have long been aware that Miss Halliday has no legal
claim on her father's fortune."

"There you have hit the mark," cried Mr. Sheldon. "She has no claim to
a sixpence in law; but to an honourable man that is not the question.
Poor Halliday's money amounted in all to something like eighteen
thousand pounds. That sum passed into my possession when I married my
poor friend's widow, who had too much respect for me to hamper my
position as a man of business by any legal restraints that would have
hindered my making the wisest use of her money. I have used that money,
and I need scarcely tell you that I have employed it with considerable
advantage to myself and Georgy. I therefore can afford to be generous,
and I mean to be so; but the manner in which I do things must be of my
own choosing. My own children are dead, and there is no one belonging
to one that stands in Miss Halliday's way. When I die she will inh