ing to a used-up fellow like yourself, and one you don't
care two straws for. It's the next worse thing to having only a life
interest in your estates. No; I forgive Grandcourt for that part of his
will. But, between ourselves, what I don't forgive him for, is the
shabby way he has provided for your niece--_our_ niece, I will say--no
better a position than if she had been a doctor's widow. Nothing grates
on me more than that posthumous grudgingness toward a wife. A man ought
to have some pride and fondness for his widow. _I_ should, I know. I
take it as a test of a man, that he feels the easier about his death
when he can think of his wife and daughters being comfortable after it.
I like that story of the fellows in the Crimean war, who were ready to
go to the bottom of the sea if their widows were provided for."

"It has certainly taken me by surprise," said Mr. Gascoigne, "all the
more because, as the one who stood in the place of father to my niece,
I had shown my reliance on Mr. Grandcourt's apparent liberality in
money matters by making no claims for her beforehand. That seemed to me
due to him under the circumstances. Probably you think me blamable."

"Not blamable exactly. I respect a man for trusting another. But take
my advice. If you marry another niece, though it may be to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, bind him down. Your niece can't be married
for the first time twice over. And if he's a good fellow, he'll wish to
be bound. But as to Mrs. Grandcourt, I can only say that I feel my
relation to her all the nearer because I think that she has not been
well treated. And I hope you will urge her to rely on me as a friend."

Thus spake the chivalrous Sir Hugo, in his disgust at the young and
beautiful widow of a Mallinger Grandcourt being left with only two
thousand a year and a house in a coal-mining district. To the rector
that income naturally appeared less shabby and less accompanied with
mortifying privations; but in this conversation he had devoured a much
keener sense than the baronet's of the humiliation cast over his niece,
and also over her nearest friends, by the conspicuous publishing of her
husband's relation to Mrs. Glasher. And like all men who are good
husbands and fathers, he felt the humiliation through the minds of the
women who would be chiefly affected by it; so that the annoyance of
first hearing the facts was far slighter than what he felt in
communicating them to Mrs. Davilow, and in antici