ation, and with difficulty ejaculated the
monosyllable:

'What!'

'I say, what's to prevent,' repeated the other with a steadiness of
manner, of the effect of which upon his companion he was well assured
by long experience, 'what's to prevent your marrying her?'

'And she 'nearly fourteen'!' cried Dick.

'I don't mean marrying her now'--returned the brother angrily; 'say in
two year's time, in three, in four. Does the old man look like a
long-liver?'

'He don't look like it,' said Dick shaking his head, 'but these old
people--there's no trusting them, Fred. There's an aunt of mind down in
Dorsetshire that was going to die when I was eight years old, and
hasn't kept her word yet. They're so aggravating, so unprincipled, so
spiteful--unless there's apoplexy in the family, Fred, you can't
calculate upon 'em, and even then they deceive you just as often as
not.'

'Look at the worst side of the question then,' said Trent as steadily
as before, and keeping his eyes upon his friend. 'Suppose he lives.'

'To be sure,' said Dick. 'There's the rub.'

'I say,' resumed his friend, 'suppose he lives, and I persuaded, or if
the word sounds more feasible, forced Nell to a secret marriage with
you. What do you think would come of that?'

'A family and an annual income of nothing, to keep 'em on,' said
Richard Swiveller after some reflection.

'I tell you,' returned the other with an increased earnestness, which,
whether it were real or assumed, had the same effect on his companion,
'that he lives for her, that his whole energies and thoughts are bound
up in her, that he would no more disinherit her for an act of
disobedience than he would take me into his favour again for any act of
obedience or virtue that I could possibly be guilty of. He could not do
it. You or any other man with eyes in his head may see that, if he
chooses.'

'It seems improbable certainly,' said Dick, musing.

'It seems improbable because it is improbable,' his friend returned.
'If you would furnish him with an additional inducement to forgive you,
let there be an irreconcilable breach, a most deadly quarrel, between
you and me--let there be a pretense of such a thing, I mean, of
course--and he'll do fast enough. As to Nell, constant dropping will
wear away a stone; you know you may trust to me as far as she is
concerned. So, whether he lives or dies, what does it come to? That
you become the sole inheritor of the wealth of this rich old hunks,
t