“My dear Miss Sampson, I know your friendly feeling towards me,” John answered, with tranquil good-nature.
Oh, how cool he was, how cruelly indifferent to her feelings! And yet he ought to have known! Had Rosellen’s Reverie, with the soft pedal down, said nothing?
Later in the evening John Treverton and his host smoked their cigars tête à tête in Mr. Sampson’s office, beside the comfortable hearth, by which the lawyer was fonder of sitting than in his sister’s highly decorated drawing-room, among the starched antimacassars, and chairs that were not to be sat on, and footstools that were intended for anything rather than the accommodation of the human foot. This unsociable habit of spending his evenings aloof from the family circle Mr. Sampson excused on the plea of business.
The two men sat opposite each other for some time in friendly silence, John Treverton gravely meditative, Mr. Sampson in an agreeable frame of mind. He was congratulating himself on the prospect of retaining his position as agent for the Treverton Estate, which profitable stewardship must have been lost to him if John Treverton had been so besotted in his folly as to forfeit his heritage by refusing to comply with the conditions of his kinsman’s will.
“I want fully to understand my position,” said John, presently. “Am I free to make what settlement I please upon my future wife?”
“You are free to settle anything which you at present possess,” answered the lawyer.
“My present possessions amount to something less than a five-pound note.”
“Then I don’t think we need talk about a marriage settlement. By the terms of your cousin’s will his estate is to be held in trust for a twelvemonth. If within that time you shall have married Miss Malcolm, the estate will pass into your possession at the end of the year. You can then make a postnuptial settlement, on as liberal a scale as you please; but you cannot give away what you do not possess.”
“I see. It must be a postnuptial settlement. Well, you may as well take my instructions at once. You can rough-draft the settlement, submit your draft to counsel, have it engrossed and ready for execution upon the day on which I pass into possession of the property.”
“You are in a desperate hurry,” said Sampson, smiling at his client’s grave eagerness.
“Life is full of desperate uncertainties. I want the welfare of the woman I love to be assured, whatever fate may be mine.”
“That is a generous forethought rare in lovers. However intensely they may love in the present, their love seldom takes the form of solicitude for the beloved one’s future. Hence generation after generation of penniless widows and destitute children. After me the deluge, is your lover’s motto. Well, Mr. Treverton, what do you propose to settle on your wife in this postnuptial deed?”
“The entire estate, real and personal,” answered John Treverton, quietly.
Mr. Sampson dropped his cigar, and sat transfixed, an image of half-amused astonishment.
“This bangs Banagher,” he exclaimed, “you must be mad.”
“No, I am only reasonable,” answered Treverton. “The estate was left to me nominally, to Laura Malcolm actually. What was I to the testator? A blood relation, truly, but a stranger. At the time he made that will he had never seen my face; what little he had ever heard of me must have been to my disadvantage; for my life has been one long mistake, and I have given no man reason to sing my praises. What was Laura to him? His adopted daughter, the beloved and the affectionate companion of his declining years; his faithful nurse, his disinterested slave. Whatever love he had to give must have been given to her. She had grown up by his hearth. She had sweetened and cheered his lonely life. He left his estate to me, in trust for her; so that he might keep his oath, and yet leave his wealth where his heart prompted him to bestow it. He found in me a convenient instrument for the carrying out of his wishes; and I have reason to be proud that he was not unwilling to trust me with such a charge, to give me the being he held dearest. I shall settle the whole of the estate on my wife, Sampson. I consider myself bound in honour to do so.”
Mr. Sampson looked at his client with a prolonged and searching gaze, a slow smile dawning on his somewhat stolid countenance.
“Don’t be offended at my asking the question,” he said. “Are you in debt?”
“I don’t owe sixpence. I have lived a somewhat Bohemian life, but I have not lived upon other people’s money.
“I am glad to hear that,” said Sampson, selecting a fresh cigar from a comfortably-filled case, “because if you imagine that by such a settlement as you propose you could escape the payment of any debts now existing, you are mistaken. A man can make no settlement to the injury of his creditors. As regards future liability the case would be different, and if you were deeply involved in commerce, a speculator, I could understand your desire to shift the estate from your own shoulders to your wife’s. But as it is—”
“Can’t you understand something not strictly commercial?” exclaimed John Treverton, waxing impatient. “Can’t you understand that I want to obey the spirit as well as the letter of my cousin Jasper’s will? I want to make his adopted daughter the actual mistress of the estate, in the same position she would have naturally occupied had he never made that foolish vow.”
“In so doing you make yourself a pensioner on her bounty.”
“So be it. I am content to occupy that position. Come, my dear Sampson, we need not argue the question any further. If you won’t draw up the form of settlement I want, I must find a lawyer who will.”
“My dear sir,” cried Tom Sampson, briskly, “when a client of mine is obstinately bent upon making a fool of himself, I always
