the streets to-morrow."

"That is your own, I tell you. The tenants have been ordered not to
pay any further rents, till they receive notice. You can make them
pay, nevertheless, if you wish it; at least, you might do so, till
some legal steps were taken."

"Of course, I shall do nothing of the kind. It was Mr Slow's people
who used to get the money. And am I not to go up to London
to-morrow?"

"You can go if you choose, but you will learn nothing. I told Mr Slow
that I would bid you wait till I heard from him again. It is time now
for us to get ready for dinner."

Then, as he was going to leave the room, she took him by the coat and
held him again,--held him as fast as she had done on the pavement in
Lincoln's Inn Fields. There was a soft, womanly, trusting weakness in
the manner of her motion as she did this, which touched him now as it
had touched him then.

"John," she said, "if there is to be so much delay, I must not stay
here."

"Why not, Margaret?"

"My aunt does not like my staying; I can see that; and I don't think
it is fair to do so while she does not know all about it. It is
something like cheating her out of the use of the house."

"Then I will tell her."

"What, all? Had I not better go first?"

"No; you cannot go. Where are you to go to? I will tell her
everything to-night. I had almost made up my mind to do so already.
It will be better that they should both know it,--my father and my
mother. My father probably will be required to say all that he knows
about the matter."

"I shall be ready to go at once if she wishes it," said Margaret.

To this he made no answer, but went upstairs to his bedroom, and
there, as he dressed, thought again, and again, and again of his
cousin Margaret. What should he do for her, and in what way should he
treat her? The very name of the Mackenzies he had hated of old, and
their names were now more hateful to him than ever. He had correctly
described his own feelings towards them when he said, either truly or
untruly, that they had deprived him of that which would have made his
whole life prosperous instead of the reverse. And it seemed as though
he had really thought that they had been in fault in this,--that they
had defrauded him. It did not, apparently, occur to him that the only
persons he could blame were his uncle Jonathan and his own lawyers,
who, at his uncle's death, had failed to discover on his behalf what
really were his rights. Walter Mackenzie