the happy future, now dipping into a tattered
copy of Southey's "Doctor;" with the consciousness that the winds and
waves had by this time wafted Captain Paget to a foreign land.

Valentine was to spend the whole of Christmas-day with Charlotte and
her kindred. He was to accompany them to a fashionable church in the
morning, to walk with them after church, to dine and tell ghost-stories
in the evening. It was to be his first day as a recognised member of
that pleasant family at Bayswater; and in the fulness of his heart he
felt affectionately disposed to all his adopted relations; even to Mr.
Sheldon, whose very noble conduct had impressed him strongly, in spite
of the bitter sneers and covert slanders of George. Charlotte had told
her lover that her stepfather was a very generous and disinterested
person, and that there was a secret which she would have been glad to
tell him, had she not been pledged to hold it inviolate, that would
have gone far to place Mr. Sheldon in a very exalted light before the
eyes of his future son-in-law.

And then Miss Halliday had nodded and smiled, and had informed her
lover, with a joyous little laugh, that he should have a horse to ride,
and an edition of Grote's "Greece" bound in dark-brown calf with
bevelled edges, when they were married; this work being one which the
young author had of late languished to possess.

"Dear foolish Lotta, I fear there will be a new history of Greece,
based on new theories, before that time comes," said the lover.

"O no, indeed; that time will come very soon. See how industriously you
work, and how well you succeed. The magazine people will soon give you
thirty pounds a month. Or who knows that you may not write some book
that will make you suddenly famous, like Byron, or the good-natured fat
little printer who wrote those long, long, long novels that no one
reads nowadays?"

Influenced by Charlotte's hints about her stepfather, Mr. Hawkehurst's
friendly feeling for that gentleman grew stronger, and the sneers and
innuendoes of the lawyer ceased to have the smallest power over him.

"The man is such a thorough-going schemer himself, that he cannot bring
himself to believe in another man's honesty," thought Mr. Hawkehurst,
while meditating upon his experience of the two brothers. "So far as I
have had any dealings with Philip Sheldon, I have found him
straightforward enough. I can imagine no hidden motive for his conduct
in relation to Charlotte. Th