f I
have given away on the very easiest terms some of the worst land on the
estate, I have improved the better, and I have spent a large sum in new
cottages. I have lived within my means; even my election expenses were
saved out of the current income."

"You do not mean to say," said Mr. MacFarlane, "that you are going to
take so wild a step as this? What good end can you secure by throwing
up your handsome fortune in this way?"

"Don't propose such a thing yet; think a little, Hogarth," said
Sinclair.

"I am sure the figure you are making in the House would delight my old
friend Harry's heart," said Mr. MacFarlane; "just in the way he would
have liked to do himself; getting in in such an honourable way too. I
heard Prentice say that he never saw anything so open and above board
and so pure as your canvassing. If you are not Harry's son, you deserve
to be, and it is no fault of yours. You are like a chip of the old
block in your ways of thinking. It is quite possible you are his son
after all: this woman is not to be believed one way or another. To give
up all this for the sake of a pair of grey eyes, and a pair of
healthy-looking cheeks that nobody ever even thought handsome, is a
young man's folly."

"Yes, and a head and a heart, and a few other things," said Francis.

"She would never be so unreasonable as to wish or expect you to do it,"
said Mr. Sinclair.

"She would not expect me to do it, I know. I cannot regret my career
more than she will do; but I love her, and I believe she loves me; and,
please God, we will begin the world together."

"I was sorry for the girls," said MacFarlane, "very sorry. You could
see that when I read the will to you; but they have really done very
creditably. In spite of the most absurd education in the world, one of
them got a capital situation as a governess; and the other did very
well indeed, I hear, at some sort of woman's work. It's the youngest
that is going to be well married in Australia, and very likely the
other will do the same."

"I think it is very likely she will," said Francis.

"But if she is married to some one else before you go out--they do
these things very quickly at the antipodes," said Mr. MacFarlane.
"There--the first mail after their arrival, we hear of Alice Melville
being engaged to be married."

"I will trust her," said Francis. "She will surely wait till she hears
how I receive this news. Even at the worst I can console myself with
your frien