at should you say to that?"

"What could he say to it?" imperiously demanded Eliza. "He is only your
nephew."

Harry looked from one to the other in a sort of bewildered surprise: and
there came a silence.

"Uncle Godfrey," he said, starting out of a reverie, "you have been good
enough to make me your heir. It was unexpected on my part, unsolicited;
but you did do it, and you caused me to leave the army in consequence,
to give up my fair prospects in life. I am aware that this deed is not
irrevocable, and certainly you have the right to do what you will with
your own property. But you must forgive me for saying that you should
have made quite sure of your intentions beforehand: before picking me
up, if it be only to throw me down again."

"There, there, we'll leave it," retorted Captain Monk testily. "No
harm's done to you yet, Mr. Harry; I don't know that it will be."

But Harry Carradyne felt sure that it would be; that he should be
despoiled of the inheritance. The resolute look of power on Eliza's
face, bent on him as he quitted the chamber, was an earnest of that.
Captain Monk was not the determined man he had once been; that was over.

"A pretty kettle of fish, this is," ruefully soliloquised Harry, as he
marched along the corridor. "Eliza's safe to get her will; no doubt of
that. And I? what am I to do? I can't repurchase and go back amongst
them again like a returned shilling; at least, I won't; and I can't turn
Parson, or Queen's Counsel, or Cabinet Minister. I'm fitted for nothing
now, that I see, but to be a gentleman-at-large; and what would the
gentleman's income be?"

Standing at the corridor window, softly whistling, he ran over ways and
means in his mind. He had a pretty house of his own, Peacock's Range,
formerly his father's, and about four hundred a-year. After his mother's
death it would not be less than a thousand a-year.

"That means bread and cheese at present. Later--Heyday, young lady,
what's the matter?"

The school-room door, close by, had opened with a burst, and Miss Kate
Dancox was flying down the stairs--her usual progress the minute
lessons were over. Harry strolled into the room. The governess was
putting the littered table straight.

"Any admission, ma'am?" cried he quaintly, making for a chair. "I should
like to ask leave to sit down for a bit."

Alice West laughed, and stirred the fire by way of welcome; he was a
very rare visitor to the school-room. The blaze, mingling w