should be glad to hear that he had done justice to poor Allen's daughter. He was written to when she was left an orphan, but vouchsafed no answer.'
'Still he may have kept an eye upon you,' added Uncle Robert. 'I do not think it was new to him that you had married into our family.'
'If only those unfortunate boys have not ruined everything,' sighed Ellen.
'Little Elvira's father must have been one of those cousins,' said Caroline. 'I wonder what became of the others? She must be-let me see-my second cousin.'
'Not very near,' said Ellen.
'I never had a blood relation before since my old aunt died. I am so glad that brilliant child belongs to me!'
'I daresay old Gould could tell you more,' said the Colonel.
'Is it wise to revive the connection?' asked his wife.
'The Goulds are not likely to presume,' said the Colonel; 'and I think that if Caroline takes up the one connection, she is bound to take up the other.'
'How am I to make up to this cross old man?' said Carey. 'I can't go and fawn on him.'
'Certainly not,' said her brother-in-law; 'but I think you ought to make some advance, merely as a relation.'
On the family vote, Caroline rather unwillingly wrote a note, explaining that she had only just discovered her kinship with Mr. Barnes, and offering to come and see him; but not the smallest notice was taken of her letter, rather to her relief, though she did not like to hear Ellen augur ill for the future.
Another letter, to old Mr. Gould, begging him to call upon her next market day, met with a far more ready response. When at his entrance she greeted him with outstretched hands, and-'I never thought you were a connection;' the fine old weather-beaten face was strangely moved, as the rugged hand took hers, and the voice was husky that said-
'I thought there was a likeness in the voice, but I never imagined you were grandchild to poor Carey Barnes; I beg your pardon, to Mrs. Otway.'
'You knew her? You must let me see something of my little cousin! I know nothing of my relations and my brother-in-law said he thought you could tell me.'
'I ought to be able, for the family lived at Woodbridge all my young days,' said the farmer.
The history was then given. The present lord of the manor had been the son of a land surveyor. He was a stunted, sickly, slightly deformed lad, noted chiefly for skill in cyphering, and therefore had been placed in a clerkship. Here a successful lottery ticket had been the foundation of his fortunes; he had invested it in the mahogany trade, and had been one of those men with whom everything turned up a prize. When a little over thirty, he had returned to his own neighbourhood, looking any imaginable age. He had then purchased Belforest, furnished it sumptuously, and laid out magnificent gardens in preparation for his bride, a charming young lady of quality. But she had had a young Lochinvar, and even in her wedding dress, favoured by sympathising servants, had escaped down the back stairs of a London hotel, and been married at the nearest Church, leaving poor Mr. Barnes in the case of the poor craven bridegroom, into whose feelings no one ever inquired.
Mr. Barnes had gone back to the West Indies at once, and never appeared in England again till he came home, a broken and soured old man, to die. There had been two sisters, and Caroline fancied that the old farmer had had some tenderness for the elder one, but she had married, before her brother's prosperity, a poor struggling builder, and both had died young, leaving their child dependent on her uncle. His younger sister had been the favourite; he had taken her back with him to America, and, married her to a man of Spanish blood, connected with him in business. The only one of her children who survived childhood was educated in England, treated as his uncle's heir, and came to Belforest for shooting. Thus it was that he had fallen in love with Farmer Gould's pretty daughter, and as it seemed, by her mother's contrivance, though without her father's consent, had made her his wife.
The wrath of Mr. Barnes was implacable. He cast off the favourite nephew as entirely as he had cast off the despised niece, and deprived him of all the means he had been led to look on as his right. The young man had nothing of his own but an estate in the small island of San Ildefonso, of very little value, and some of his former friends made interest to obtain a vice-consulship for him at the Spanish town. Then, after a few years, both husband and wife died, leaving this little orphan to the care of her grandfather, who had written to Mr. Barnes on her father's death, but had heard nothing from him, and had too much honest pride to make any further application.
'My little cousin,' said Caroline, 'the first I ever knew. Pray bring her to see me, and let her stay with me long enough for me to know her.'
The old man began to prepare her for the child's being shy and wild, though perhaps her aunt was too particular with her, and expected too much. Perhaps she would be homesick, he said, so wistfully that it was plain that he did not know how to exist without his darling; but he was charmed with the invitation, and Caroline was pleased to see that he did not regard her as his grandchild's rival, but as representing the cherished playmate of his youth.
CHAPTER XIII. THE RIVAL HEIRESSES.
You smile, their eager ways to see, But mark their choice when they To choose their sportive garb are free, The moral of their play. Keble.
One curious part of the reticence of youth is that which relates to its comprehension of grown-up affairs. There is a smile with which the elders greet any question on the subject, half of wonder, half of amusement, which is perfectly intolerable to the young, who remain thinking that they are regarded as presumptuous and absurd, and thus will do anything rather than expose themselves to it again.
Thus it was that Mrs. Brownlow flattered herself that her children never put two and two together when she let them know of the discovery of their relationship. Partly she judged by herself. She was never in the habit of forecasting, and for so clever and spirited a woman, she thought wonderfully little. She had plenty of intuitive sense, decided rapidly and clearly, and could easily throw herself in other people's thoughts, but she seldom reflected, analysed or moralised, save on the spur of the moment. She lived chiefly in the present, and the chief events of her life had all come so suddenly and unexpectedly upon her, that she was all the less inclined to guess at the future, having always hitherto been taken by surprise.
So, when Jock observed in public-'Mother, they say at Kencroft that the old miser ought to leave you half his money. Do you think he will?' it was with perfect truth that she answered, 'I don't think at all about it.'
It was taken in the family as an intimation that she would not talk about it, and while she supposed that the children drew no conclusions, they thought the more.
Allen was gone to Eton, but Janet and Bobus had many discussions over their chemical experiments, about possibilities and probabilities, odd compounds of cleverness and ignorance.
'Mother must be heir-at-law, for her grandmother was eldest,' said Janet.
'A woman can't be heir-at-law,' said Bobus.
'The Salique law doesn't come into England.'
'Yes it does, for Sir John Gray got Graysnest only last year, instead of the old man's daughter.
'Then how comes the Queen to be Queen?'
'Besides,'-Bobus shifted his ground to another possibility-'when there's nobody but a lot of women, the thing goes into abeyance among them.'
'Who gets it, then?'
'Chancery, I suppose, or some of the lawyers. They are all blood- suckers.'
'I'm sure,' said Janet, superior by three years of wisdom, 'that abeyance only happens about Scotch peerages; and if he has not made a will, mother will be heiress.'
'Only halves with that black Undine of Allen's,' sturdily persisted Bobus. 'Is she coming here, Janet?'
'Yes, to-morrow. I did not think we wanted another child about the house; Essie and Ellie are quite enough.'
'If mother gets rich she won't have all that teaching to bother her,' said Bobus.
'And I can go on with my education,' said Janet.
'Girl's education does not signify,' said Bobus. 'Now I shall be able to get the very best instruction in physical
