The next day Sir Joseph Graybrooke, Sir Joseph’s lawyer, Mr. Dicas (highly respectable and immensely rich), and Richard Turlington were assembled in the library at Muswell Hill, to discuss the question of Natalie’s marriage settlement.

After the usual preliminary phrases had been exchanged, Sir Joseph showed some hesitation in openly approaching the question which the little party of three had met to debate. He avoided his lawyer’s eye; and he looked at Turlington rather uneasily.

“Richard,” he began at last, “when I spoke to you about your marriage, on board the yacht, I said I would give my daughter —” Either his courage or his breath failed him at that point. He was obliged to wait a moment before he could go on.

“I said I would give my daughter half my fortune on her marriage,” he resumed. “Forgive me, Richard. I can’t do it!”

Mr. Dicas, waiting for his instructions, laid down his pen and looked at Sir Joseph’s son-in-law elect. What would Mr. Turlington say?

He said nothing. Sitting opposite the window, he rose when Sir Joseph spoke, and placed himself at the other side of the table, with his back to the light.

“My eyes are weak this morning,” he said, in an unnaturally low tone of voice. “The light hurts them.”

He could find no more plausible excuse than that for concealing his face in shadow from the scrutiny of the two men on either side of him. The continuous moral irritation of his unhappy courtship — a courtship which had never advanced beyond the frigid familiarity of kissing Natalie’s hand in the presence of others — had physically deteriorated him. Even his hardy nerves began to feel the long strain of suspicion that had been laid unremittingly on them for weeks past. His power of self-control — he knew it himself — was not to be relied on. He could hide his face: he could no longer command it.

“Did you hear what I said, Richard?”

“I heard. Go on.”

Sir Joseph proceeded, gathering confidence as he advanced.

“Half my fortune!” he repeated. “It’s parting with half my life; it’s saying good-by forever to my dearest friend! My money has been such a comfort to me, Richard; such a pleasant occupation for my mind. I know no reading so interesting and so instructive as the reading of one’s Banker’s Book. To watch the outgoings on one side,” said Sir Joseph, with a gentle and pathetic solemnity, “and the incomings on the other — the sad lessening of the balance at one time, and the cheering and delightful growth of it at another — what absorbing reading! The best novel that ever was written isn’t to be mentioned in a breath with it. I can not, Richard, I really can not, see my nice round balance shrink up to half the figure that I have been used to for a lifetime. It may be weak of me,” proceeded Sir Joseph, evidently feeling that it was not weak of him at all, “but we all have our tender place, and my Banker’s Book is mine. Besides, it isn’t as if you wanted it. If you wanted it, of course — but you don’t want it. You are a rich man; you are marrying my dear Natalie for love, not for money. You and she and my grandchildren will have it all at my death. It can make no difference to you to wait a few years till the old man’s chair at the fireside is empty. Will you say the fourth part, Richard, instead of the half? Twenty thousand,” pleaded Sir Joseph, piteously. “I can bear twenty thousand off. For God’s sake don’t ask me for more!”

The lips of the lawyer twisted themselves sourly into an ironical smile. He was quite as fond of his money as Sir Joseph. He ought to have felt for his client; but rich men have no sympathy with one another. Mr. Dicas openly despised Sir Joseph.

There was a pause. The robin-redbreasts in the shrubbery outside must have had prodigious balances at their bankers; they hopped up on the window-sill so fearlessly; they looked in with so little respect at the two rich men.

“Don’t keep me in suspense, Richard,” proceeded Sir Joseph. “Speak out. Is it yes or no?”

Turlington struck his hand excitedly on the table, and burst out on a sudden with the answer which had been so strangely delayed.

“Twenty thousand with all my heart!” he said. “On this condition, Graybrooke, that every farthing of it is settled on Natalie, and on her children after her. Not a half-penny to me!” he cried magnanimously, in his brassiest tones. “Not a half-penny to me!”

Let no man say the rich are heartless. Sir Joseph seized his son-in-law’s hand in silence, and burst into tears.

Mr. Dicas, habitually a silent man, uttered the first two words that had escaped him since the business began. “Highly creditable,” he said, and took a note of his instructions on the spot.

From that point the business of the settlement flowed smoothly on to its destined end. Sir Joseph explained his views at the fullest length, and the lawyer’s pen kept pace with him. Turlington, remaining in his place at the table, restricted himself to a purely passive part in the proceedings. He answered briefly when it was absolutely necessary to speak, and he agreed with the two elders in everything. A man has no attention to place at the disposal of other people when he stands at a crisis in his life. Turlington stood at that crisis, at the trying moment when Sir Joseph’s unexpected proposal pressed instantly for a reply. Two merciless alternatives confronted him. Either he must repay the borrowed forty thousand pounds on the day when repayment was due, or he must ask Bulpit Brothers to grant him an extension of time, and so inevitably provoke an examination into the fraudulent security deposited with the firm, which could end in but one way. His last, literally his last chance, after Sir Joseph had diminished the promised dowry by one half, was to adopt the high-minded tone which became his position, and to conceal the truth until he could reveal it to his father-in-law in the privileged character of Natalie’s husband. “I owe forty thousand pounds, sir, in a fortnight’s time, and I have not got a farthing of my own. Pay for me, or you will see your son-in-law’s name in the Bankrupt’s List.” For his daughter’s sake — who could doubt it? — Sir Joseph would produce the money. The one thing needful was to be married in time. If either by accident or treachery Sir Joseph was led into deferring the appointed day, by so much as a fortnight only, the fatal “call” would come, and the firm of Pizzituti, Turlington & Branca would appear in the Gazette.

So he reasoned, standing on the brink of the terrible discovery which was soon to reveal to him that Natalie was the wife of another man.

“Richard!”

“Mr. Turlington!”

He started, and roused his attention to present things. Sir Joseph on one side, and the lawyer on the other, were both appealing to him, and both regarding him with looks of amazement.

“Have you done with the settlement?” he asked.

“My dear Richard, we have done with it long since,” replied Sir Joseph. “Have you really not heard what I have been saying for the last quarter of an hour to good Mr. Dicas here? What can you have been thinking of?”

Turlington did not attempt to answer the question. “Am I interested,” he asked, “in what you have been saying to Mr. Dicas?”

“You shall judge for yourself,” answered Sir Joseph, mysteriously; “I have been giving Mr. Dicas his instructions for making my Will. I wish the Will and the Marriage–Settlement to be executed at the same time. Read the instructions, Mr. Dicas.”

Sir Joseph’s contemplated Will proved to have two merits — it was simple and it was short. Excepting one or two trifling legacies to distant relatives, he had no one to think of (Miss Lavinia being already provided for) but his daugh............