y wish she were an heiress, for your sake."

The eyes of the two men met as the Captain said this; and there was a
twinkle in the cold gray orbs of that gentleman which had a very
unpleasant effect upon Valentine.

"What treachery is he engaged in now?" he asked himself. "I know that
look in my Horatio's eyes; and I know it always means mischief."

George Sheldon made his appearance at the Lawn five minutes after his
brother came home from the City. He entered the domestic circle in his
usual free-and-easy manner, knowing himself to be endured, rather than
liked, by the two ladies, and to be only tolerated as a necessary evil
by the master of the house.

"I've dropped in to eat a chop with you, Phil," he said, "in order to
get an hour's comfortable talk after dinner. There's no saying half a
dozen consecutive words to you in the City, where your clerks seem to
spend their lives in bouncing in upon you when you don't want them."

There was very little talk during dinner. Charlotte and her stepfather
were thoughtful. Diana was chiefly employed in listening to the _sotto
voce_ inanities of Mrs. Sheldon, for whom the girl showed herself
admirably patient. Her forbearance and gentleness towards Georgy
constituted a kind of penitential sacrifice, by which she hoped to
atone for the dark thoughts and bitter feelings that possessed her mind
during those miserable hours in which she was obliged to witness the
happiness of Charlotte and her lover.

George Sheldon devoted himself chiefly to his dinner and a certain dry
sherry, which he particularly affected. He was a man who would have
dined and enjoyed himself at the table of Judas Iscariot, knowing the
banquet to be provided out of the thirty pieces of silver.

"That's as good a pheasant as I ever ate, Phil," he said, after winding
up with the second leg of the bird in question. "No, Georgy; no
macaroni, thanks. I don't care about kickshaws after a good dinner. Has
Hawkehurst dined with you lately, by the way, Phil?"

Charlotte blushed red as the holly-berries that decorated the
chandelier. It was Christmas-eve, and her own fair hands had helped to
bedeck the rooms with festal garlands of evergreen and holly.

"He dines with us to-morrow," replied the stockbroker. "You'll come, I
suppose, as usual, George?"

"Well, I shall be very glad, if I'm not in the way."

Mrs. Sheldon murmured some conventional protestation of the unfailing
delight afforded to her by George's s