"And if she should die childless, I should get all the free-hold
property?" he said at last, waking up suddenly from that state of
abstraction, and turning his thoughtful face upon the lawyer.
"Yes; all the real estate would be yours."
"Have you any notion what the property is worth?"
"Not an exact notion. Your father gave me a list of investments.
Altogether, I should fancy, the income will be something
handsome--between two and three thousand a year, perhaps. Strange, isn't
it, for a man with all that money to have lived such a life as your
father's?"
"Strange indeed," Percival Nowell cried with a sneer. "And my daughter
will step into two or three thousand a year," he went on: "very pleasant
for her, and for her husband into the bargain. Of course I'm not going to
say that I wouldn't rather have had the income myself. You'd scarcely
swallow that, as a man of the world, you see, Medler. But the girl is my
only child, and though circumstances have divided us for the greater part
of our lives, blood is thicker than water; and in short, since there was
no getting the governor to do the right thing, and leave this money to
me, it's the next best thing that he should leave it to Marian."
"To say nothing of the possibility of her dying without children, and
your coming into the property after all," said Mr.
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