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d, leaving behind him a fortune. What was the sum? He glances back to the sheet in his hand and verifies his thought. Yes--eighty thousand pounds! A good fortune even in these luxurious days. He has died worth L80,000, of which his daughter is sole heiress! Before the professor's eyes rises a vision of old Wynter. They used to call him "old," those boys who attended his classes, though he was as light-hearted as the best of them, and as handsome as a dissipated Apollo. They had all loved him, if they had not revered him, and, indeed, he had been generally regarded as a sort of living and lasting joke amongst them. Curzon, holding the letter in his hand, and bringing back to his memory the handsome face and devil-may-care expression of his tutor, remembers how the joke had widened, and reached its height when, at forty years of age, old Wynter had flung up his classes, leaving them all _plante la_ as it were, and declared his intention of starting life anew and making a pile for himself in some new world. Well! it had not been such a joke after all, if they had only known. Wynter _had_ made that mythical "pile," and had left his daughter an heiress! Not only an heiress, but a gift to Miss Jane Majendie, of somewhere in Bloomsbury. The professor's disturbed face grows calm again. It even occurs to him that he has not eaten his breakfast. He so _often_ remembers this, that it does not trouble him. To pore over his books (that are overflowing every table and chair in the uncomfortable room) until his eggs are India-rubber, and his rashers gutta-percha, is not a fresh experience. But though this morning both eggs and rasher have attained a high place in the leather department, he enters on his sorry repast with a glad heart. Sweet are the rebounds from jeopardy to joy! And he has so _much_ of joy! Not only has he been able to shake from his shoulders that awful incubus--and ever-present ward--but he can be sure that the absent ward is so well-off with regard to this word's goods, that he need never give her so much as a passing thought--dragged, _torn_ as that thought would be from his beloved studies. The aunt, of course, will see about her fortune. _He_ has has only a perfunctory duty--to see that the fortune is not squandered. But he is safe there. Maiden ladies _never_ squander! And the girl, being only seventeen, can't possibly squander it herself for some time. Perhaps he ought to call on her, however
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