bitter taste of the waters of
despair.

"I shall be Turrald of Great Missenden," he said, and again the expression
of his face showed what the words meant to him.

"Bob! So you've actually succeeded after all!" Mrs. Pendleton stepped
quickly across to her brother as he sat regarding his audience from behind
his pile of documents. It was like a sister, at that moment, to slip back
to the juvenile name and kiss his elderly face with tears in her eyes.
Robert Turold received the caress unmoved, and she went back to the sofa.

"Lord Turrald! It sounds well," murmured her husband, whose ideas were
sufficiently democratic to give him a sneaking admiration for a title. He
gazed at his brother-in-law with a new respect, discerning unsuspected
indications of noble blood in his grim visage.

"How do you account for the two forms of spelling your family name?"
observed Dr. Ravenshaw. "The House of Lords will require proof on that
point, will they not?"

"I shall be able to satisfy them," returned Robert Turold. "The first
Robert Turold reverted to the Norman spelling when he settled in Suffolk.
Turrald is the corrupted form, doubtless due to early Saxon difficulties
with Norman names. The Saxons were never very glib at Norman-French, and
there was no standardized spelling of family names at that period."

"It would be interesting to know how the name of Simon came to be bestowed
upon the Simon Turrald who fled to Cornwall after Bosworth. The name is
Biblical--not Norman. The Normans were pagan, worshipping Woden and Thor,
though supposed to be Christianized after Charles the Simple ceded
Neustria to Rollo."

"Simon was a good mediaeval name in France and was fairly common in
England from the twelfth century until after the Reformation. It was
Norman, as being that of an apostle, and was never popular among the
Puritans."

"It seems a pity that you cannot claim the Turrald estates," put in
Austin. "They must have been immensely wealthy."

"It is quite out of the question," replied Robert decisively. "They have
been alienated for centuries. But it has been part of my life's work to
provide for the upkeep of the title when I gained it. I shall be able to
ensure my heirs an income of nearly eight thousand pounds a year."

It was Mrs. Pendleton's first intimation of the amount of the fortune her
brother had gained abroad. "Eight thousand a year!" she exclaimed. "Oh,
Robert, it is wealth."

"One could live very comfortably