him, held out his hand. "Oh, nonsense; I'm all right." But he
put his own into it, and let John with his other hand push up the sleeve
of his coat.

"Too thin by half, isn't it?" he said, affecting indifference, as John
gravely relinquished it; "but I am so mummied up in flannels that it
doesn't show much."

"My dear fellow," John Mortimer repeated.

"Yes, I have been long unwell, but now I have leave to start in one
week, John. I'm to take a sea voyage. You told me you could only stay
here a few days, and there is a great deal that ought to be done while
you are here. Don't look so dismayed, the doctors give me every hope
that I shall be all right again."

"I devoutly hope so----"

"There's nothing to drive the blood from your manly visage," Valentine
said lightly, then went on, "There is one thing that I ought not to have
neglected so long, and if I were in the best health possible I still
ought to do it, before I take a long sea voyage." He spoke now almost
with irritation, as if he longed to leave the subject of his health and
was urgent to talk of business matters. John Mortimer, with as much
indifference as he could assume, tried to meet his wishes.

"You have been in possession of this estate almost a year," he said,
"so I hope, indeed I assume, that the making of a will is not what you
have neglected?"

"But it is."

Rather an awkward thing this to be said to the heir-at-law. He paused
for a moment, then remarked, "I met just now, driving away from your
door, the very man who read to us our grandmother's will."

"I have been telling him that he shall make one for me forthwith."

"When I consider that you have many claims," said John, "and consider
further that your property is all land, I wonder at your----"

"My neglect. Yes, I knew you would say so."

"When shall this be done then?"

"To-morrow."

Then Valentine began to talk of other matters, and he expressed, with a
directness certainly not called for, his regret that John Mortimer
should have made the sacrifices he had acknowledged to, in order
eventually to withdraw his name and interest altogether from his banking
affairs.

John was evidently surprised, but he took Valentine's remarks
good-humouredly.

"I know you have had losses," continued Valentine. "But now you have got
a partner, and----"

"It's all settled," said John, declining to argue the question.

"You fully mean to retire from probable riches to a moderate
competence?