“YOU, who would not go out to dinner because you could not afford it!” cried Harry, “how do you dare venture on such rash proceedings? It appears to me you have adopted a new member into the family.”

“Ah, but it is different,” said I; “going out to dinner was a matter of choice, this was a matter of necessity.”

“It depends upon how people think,” said Harry, “the priest and the Levite were of quite a different opinion; but if you mean to have friends and pensioners, and get rich people and poor people about you, Milly darling, we’ll have to think of new supplies. I cannot imagine how it has gone out of my mind all this time. Pendleton actually asked me to-day whether I had heard anything more about your grandfather’s house.”

“My grandfather’s house!” I said; and we both looked at each other and laughed; our removal had put all that out of our heads. Chester, and new places to look at, and new people to see, and just the usual disturbance of one’s thoughts in changing about, had betrayed Harry who was so anxious about it, just as much as it had betrayed me.

“I must see after it now in earnest. A thousand pounds or so, you know,” said Harry, with a kind of serio-comic look, “would be worth a great deal to you just now.”

And with this he went out. A thousand pounds or so! twenty would have been nice; aye, or ten, or even five, more than just our regular money. However, I only laughed to myself, and went upstairs to my poor gentleman. After all, I am not so sure that he was a gentleman, or at least anything unusual in himself. He was very independent, and want, and a passionate dread of being found out, and made a pauper of, had carried him to a kind of heroism for the moment. But when he got used to me, and consented to let me bring him things, he became very much like other people. He was always eager to get the newspaper and see the news. I carried him up the Chester paper, which Mrs. Goldsworthy took in just now.{197}

When I went into his room, the first thing I saw was two letters on the table. He was just drawing back, and still trembling from his exertion, for he was still very weak. He put the letters towards me with a little movement of his hand.

“I am writing to ask for work; I’m wonderfully steady now, wonderfully steady; if they would only give me work! Ah, it’s hard times when a man can’t get work,” he said.

I glanced at them as he wished me. “Cresswell?” said I; “I think I know his daughter, Mr. Ward. I’ll speak to her; perhaps she can make him help you.”

“She can make him do whatever she likes,” said my friend, with his wistful eyes; “it’ll be well for him if she don’t make him do what he’ll repent.”

“How do you mean?” said I, with some surprise.

“Well!” said my patient, “it’s a story I don’t understand, and I can’t give you the rights of it. I was never more than just about the office an hour or so in the day, getting my copy. You see there’s two rich old ladies about half-a-dozen miles out o’ Chester, and there’s either some flaw in their title, or something that way. I know for certain there was an advertisement written out for the Times, for one Mortimer——”

“Mortimer!”

“Yes,” he said, looking at me in his eager way. “I suppose it had been some day when he had quarrelled with them, and meant to bring in the true owner; when all of a sudden it was withdrawn, and has never been in the Times to this day; and Miss Cresswell after that spent a long time at the Park. Somebody said in the office it was more than likely the ladies would leave their property to her; and to be sure if that was so, it would be none of her father’s business to hunt up the right heir.”

I felt completely dizzy and bewildered; I kept looking down upon the table, where the letters seemed to be flitting about with the strangest unsteady motion.

“And are the ladies called Mortimer?” I said, almost under my breath.

“Yes; they’re folks well known in Chester, though seldom to be seen here,” said Mr. Ward; “the youngest one, Miss Milly, is a good creature; the other one, and her name is Sarah, was a great beauty in her day. I remember when I was a lad, we young fellows would walk all that way just to see her riding out of the gates, or driving her grey ponies;{198} they called her the beautiful Miss Mortimer in those days. I daresay now she’s as old, and as crazy, and as chilly—but thank heaven, she can never be as poor, and as friendless, and as suffering—as me.”

I could not make any answer for a long time. I stood with my hands clasped together, and my brain in a perfect whirl; these words, Sarah, Miss Mortimer, the Park, going in gusts through my mind. What did it mean? I had come upstairs with a smile on my lips about the fabulous house of my grandfather. Was this the real story now about to disclose itself? I felt for a moment that overwhelming impatience to hear more which makes one giddy when on the verge of a discovery; but I did not want to betray myself to the old man.

“And do you mean,” said I, holding fast by the table to keep myself from trembling, “that they are not the lawful owners of their estate?”

“Nay, I cannot tell you that,” said my patient, very coolly; “but what could be wanted with an advertisement in the Times for one Mortimer? and old Cresswell holding it back, you know, as soon as it was likely that his girl might get the Park.”

“Do you remember what was the Mortimer’s name that was to be advertised for? I know some Mortimers,” said I, with a little tremble in my voice.

“I can’t say I exactly remember just at this moment,” said the old man, after a little pause. “It wasn’t like a Mortimer name; it was—nay, stay,—it was one of the cotton-spinners’ names; I remember I thought of the spinning-jenny directly; something in that way; I can’t tell exactly what i............